
"F 



Class_ t'2b 

Book._ 



Ci)EXRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE FONDREN LECTURES FOR 1922 

Delivered before the SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY 
of SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY 



FACING THE CRISIS 

A STUDY IN PRESENT DAY SOCIAL 
AND RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS 



BY 

SHERWOOD EDDY 



The Fondren Lectures 

Mr. and Mrs. W . W . Fondren, members of St. PauVs 
Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Houston, Texas, gave 
to Southern Methodist University on May 10, 1910, a fund, 
the proceeds from which were to be used in the establish- 
ment of the Fondren Lectures on Christian Missions. 
The following paragraphs from the conditions of the original 
gift will set forth the spirit and purpose of the Foundation. 

"The interest on the investment shall be used annually in 
procuring some competent person to deliver lectures on 
Christian Missions under the auspices of Southern Methodist 
University. This fund is dedicated to the foundation of a 
lectureship on Christian Missions in consideration of other 
donations made for the upbuilding of Southern Methodist 
University, and especially the School of Theology thereof 
and in the hope that something of good may come directly 
therefrom and that others more able to give largely may be 
inspired to devote some portion of the means which they 
hold in trust as stewards of the Lord to the increase of 
said fund or to some other laudable enterprise of our 
church" 



FACING THE CRISIS 



A STUDY IN PRESENT DAY SOCIAL 
AND RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS 

BY 

SHERWOOD EDDY 




NEW Xair YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



3T? jzr 



COPYRIGHT, 1932, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY. 



FAQNG THE OUSIS. I 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



OCT ^6 72 
CIA686110 



TO 

M. L. E. 
M. H. E. 
M. M. E. 



FOREWORD 

We are facing a crisis in the world today. There 
have been crises in the past and doubtless there will 
be again in the future. But we are confronted with 
an unprecedented situation in our war-torn world. 
The late war has left us rent and divided in three 
great cleavages of humanity, in national, racial and 
industrial strife. Almost every nation is demanding 
self-determination; every race is claiming its equal 
and rightful place in the brotherhood of man; every 
class, especially the industrial toilers of the world, 
demanding economic freedom and a more abundant 
life. We are standing at the beginning of a new 
creative epoch in history, in a vast*period of transi- 
tion from the old order to the new. An old mate- 
rialistic order of selfish privilege and competitive 
force, an order of imperialism, congested capitalism 
and militarism, breaking out periodically into overt 
war, is lying in wreckage all about us. But the 
building of a new order has already begun. 

There is a crisis in our national and international 
affairs. Is war to threaten our final civilization or 
is it to be outlawed? There is a crisis in our Indus- 
trial life. The writer on his last journey around 
the world found strikes in Japan, China, India, 
Egypt and throughout Europe, but he returned to 
find over three thousand a year in America. What 
is the meaning of this world-wide industrial unrest? 

vii 



viii FOREWORD 

There is a crisis In our race relationships. The 
trouble in India, Egypt and other lands has its 
roots in racial as well as in national antipathy. There 
Is a new race consciousness observable since the war 
throughout almost the whole of Asia and it Is now 
spreading in Africa. The United States with her 
problem of Im.migratlon and an average of two 
lynchlngs a week or about a hundred a year, must 
face this challenge of the unsolved race problem. 

There is a crisis in our religious life. We have 
made far more rapid advance In scientific discov- 
eries in the material realm than in our spiritual life. 
The war has revealed fundamental seams of weak- 
ness In our civilization. W'^e must rethink our posi- 
tion, restate our faith in terms of modern thought, 
and endeavor to reconcile the undoubted and incon- 
trovertible facts of experience In the realm of 
religion and of science. This book is a plea that 
we face this crisis fearlessly and honestly, proving 
all things and holding fast the good, the true and 
the beautiful. 

There is a crisis also In the life of every Individual, 
who, facing the challenge of our turbulent times, is 
forced to make the transition from the medieval to 
the modern point of view. 

At the Des Moines Convention of the Student 
Volunteer Movement where some seven thousand 
students from a thousand institutions in the United 
States and Canada had assembled, the crisis created 
by the war was evident in one meeting where scores 
of questions were asked on the vital religious, 
social and industrial problems which these students 
were facing. The meeting was of such interest that 



FOREWORD ix 

the experiment was tried In various colleges of this 
country and later in meetings for students in other 
lands as well. It was then that this strange fact 
was observed. We found that the students are ask- 
ing practically the same round of questions in every 
college, in every country today. In the state universi- 
ties of this country; in Cairo, or Assuit on the Upper 
Nile, in Turkey; in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Ger- 
many, or Sweden; in America, Europe or Asia we 
find students facing the same great questions. Many 
of these are the persistent problems that have always 
beset and baffled the human mind. Yet some face 
a new world with a fresh challenge in this period 
of reconstruction and of striving for the creation of 
a new social order. Many are demanding today ^ 
reinterpretation of old beliefs and a restatement of 
all our thinking in modern terms. 

When asked to deliver the Fondren Lectures at 
the Southern Methodist University at Dallas in 
1922, and later, the Sturtevant Lectures at Alle- 
gheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, It seemed 
that no better theme could be chosen than "Facing 
the Crisis," to endeavor to answer briefly the ques- 
tions of the hour that were actually being asked by 
the students themselves. They seemed to be indeed 
issues of universal interest, not alone to students 
but to all thinking men who have to face the prob- 
lems of our day. 

The questions asked fall naturally into two groups : 
I. Religious and Philosophical; 2. Social and Indus- 
trial. 

It is obvious that in the brief space of one short 



X FOREWORD 

volume all these great questions cannot be exhaus- 
tively or adequately discussed. 

The views expressed are personal and unofficial 
and do not represent those of any organization or 
denomination, nor can the writer speak as an 
authority upon modern science, philosophy, or 
theology. For more than twenty-five years he has 
been working among the students of Asia, America, 
and Europe, who feel the pressure of these problems, 
and, so far as in him lies, he feels that they are 
entitled to an honest answer to their questions. 

Quotations from the New Testament are prevail- 
ingly made from Moffatt's translation. As in the 
King James and Revised Versions pronouns refer- 
ring to God or Christ are not printed in capitals. 
The writer's thanks are due to many friends who 
have generously read and criticized portions of the 
manuscript. 
New York, 1922. 

Note: — For the guidance of the thoughtful reader and for those 
who desire to use this book in discussion groups or for class study 
a pamphlet has been prepared of questions, suggestions for leaders, 
and a list of helpful books for further reading on the various sub- 
jects. Copies of the pamphlet can be had on application from 
Association Press, 347 Madison Avenue, New York. 



CONTENTS 

PART I: RELIGIOUS AND PHILOSOPHICAL 



I Jesus Christ — ^What Is His Signifi- 



PAGE 



CANCE? 15 

II God — Does He Exist, How Can He Be 

Found? 47 

III The Problem of Evil — If God Is Good 

Why Is There Suffering? ... 65 

IV Immortality — Is There a Life after 

Death? 77 

V Miracles — Have They Really Hap- 
pened? 87 

VI The Bible — How Is It Different from 

Other Books? 97 

VII Evolution — Can We Reconcile Science 

AND Religion? ,110 

VIII Prayer — ^What Happens When We 

Pray? 122 

IX The New Life — How Does It Change a 

Man? 131 

X Moral Mastery — The Fight for Char- 
acter 140 

XI World Brotherhood — Is Our Religion 

Worth Exporting? 151 

xi 



xii CONTENTS 

PAGE 

PART II: SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL 

XII Outstanding National Problems . . i6i 

XIII The Race Question 165 

XIV The Ethics of War 173 

XV Industrial Unrest 179 

XVI Wealth and Poverty 182 

XVII Collective Bargaining 187 

XVIII The Open or Closed Shop .... 192 

XIX The Social Gospel 198 

XX The Christian Solution 203 

XXI Motives and Objectives 218 

XXII Conclusion — The Faith of a Modern 

Christian 224 

Appendices 

I: The Fellowship for a Chris- 
tian Social Order . . . . 233 

II: The Social Ideals of the 

Churches 235 

III : Books on Current Social Prob- 
lems 237 

Index 239 



FACING THE CRISIS 



PART I: RELIGIOUS AND 
PHILOSOPHICAL 



JESUS CHRIST 

Who was Jesus Christ? What is his significance 
as we face the present crisis f Was he in any sense 
divine f Was he unique^ as the supreme manifes- 
tation of God? 

Let us study in turn his character, his teaching, 
his unique relationships, the historic effects of his 
life; and the strange contrasts and paradoxes in 
which he seems to transcend his environment. We 
shall then examine the otherwise broken arch of hu- 
man experience, in the incomplete structure of 
science, philosophy, art, morality and religion, to 
see if perchance he furnishes the key-stone and com- 
pletion of life. We shall finally see if he meets 
the test of personal experience. 

We have better records of the life of Jesus than 
of any character in ancient history. There is, more- 
over, a certain self-evidencing value in these narra- 
tives, a rugged, sober sincerity, a sense of reality, 
a straightforward honesty of purpose that makes 

15 



16 FACING THE CRISIS 

its own appeal. Let us then take these simple 
records and see whether they bring us evidence that 
Jesus was merely an ordinary man like ourselves, 
or whether he stands unique and alone, unlike all 
who came before, and all who followed after him. 

It may seem strange to some that Jesus was in 
any peculiar sense divine, but once granted a per- 
sonal or loving God who desired to help men as his 
children or to manifest himself to them, how other- 
wise could he do so intelligibly, helpfully and 
finally save in a human life like that of Jesus? 

Let us begin, however, with him just as a man, 
and study his life and teaching. 

I. His Character, How strong he was! Fiercely 
tempted for forty days, he returns triumphant, with 
power enough to help a defeated humanity. How 
fearlessly he stands before his enemies, undaunted, 
unswerving from the path of duty. All the tyranny 
of Jewish legalism or of Roman imperialism could 
not crush him. Quietly and unafraid he moves to 
his appointed end. How strong Is his hold upon 
men, as he calls them to leave home and kindred, 
ambition, possessions, all things, even life itself, 
to follow him. After sixty generations, his call is 
still the most commanding and imperative in hu- 
man life, as he leads men to go for him to the heart 
of social Injustice, or to the ends of the earth, to 
the jungles of Africa, to the limits of Asia, to 
tropic heat or arctic cold, to carry his transforming 
message of good news. Feeble and falling humanity 
has ever turned to him In its deepest despair and 
in its highest hope as "strong Son of God.'' Still 



JESUS CHRIST 17 

we say, * 'Purest among the mighty, mightiest among 
the pure, whose pierced hand has hfted empires 
from their foundations, has turned the stream of 
history from its channel and still guides the ages.'* 
Does not his whole life leave upon us the impress 
of overmastering moral strength and spiritual 
power? 

How pure and sinless he was! All the world's 
literature and all its sacred books contain the record 
of no other sinless character, and none was ever con- 
ceived or successfully portrayed in fiction. Every 
other great religious leader has passed through a 
conversion, or a period of repentance. The best 
men have ever been most ready to confess their 
faults and failings, for "human piety begins with 
repentance." Jesus seems removed by a world from 
even the best of his followers, who like Peter cry, 
"Depart from me, for I am a sinful man," or, like 
Paul, out of a tortured conscience of despairing 
legalism, "O, wretched man that I am! Who shall 
deliver me?" Out of the depths of a seemingly 
sinless consciousness, unconvicted before man and 
unrepentant before the very presence of God, he 
calls the world to a standard of perfect purity — 
"Ye shall be perfect." He lays bare, as none other, 
the depravity of the human heart; yet seems con- 
scious of no guilt or shortcoming of his own. Who 
is this that calls a world to repentance, yet needs 
none himself; who prays, "Father forgive theviy* 
but never, "Father forgive me^^f 

After years spent in the daily intimacy of his 
presence, as he was pressed by the throng, wearied. 



18 FACING THE CRISIS 

persecuted, deserted, nailed to a felon's cross, these 
men who companied with him, who would go to 
death rather than accord divine honors to Caesar 
or any other man living or dead, gave him in their 
thought and worship the supreme place as "Lord," 
as the very symbol of deity, as God revealed in a 
human life. His greatest enemy Saul of Tarsus 
places this Galilean carpenter beside God and 
finally comes to sum up human experience in the 
words, "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and 
the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy 
Spirit be with you all." 

If God were to manifest himself In a human 
life, could it be more Godlike in moral purity? 

And how loving he was ! For three years we 
see him going about doing good, sharing his life 
with needy men in limitless self-giving, the great- 
est heart of all human history. None other ever 
compassed humanity, sounded the depths of its sin, 
swept the whole horizon of its sympathy. None 
other ever so loved the whole sordid world "unto 
the end." The multitude of the poor gathered 
about him as though drawn by a great human mag- 
net. Little children strangely loved him as he took 
them in his arms and placed his hands upon them. 
It was the taunt of his enemies, but the glory of 
history, that he was "the friend of sinners." He 
seems possessed by "the enthusiasm of humanity" 
that takes in the human race in its breadth and 
endless reach. And yet he loved each, one by one. 
He loves Peter, who breaks his heart, cursing and 
swearing as he denies him. He loves Judas as he 



JESUS CHRIST 19 

stoops to wash the feet of his betrayer. Each ia 
his presence felt the glow of his personal affection. 

We see him in his last agony, exhausted under 
the Roman scourging, spit upon, nailed to a cross, 
reviled, rejected, hated, his life plans seemingly fall- 
ing in wreckage about him, before the cynical hard- 
ness and hatred of impenitent Pharisees and Sad- 
ducees who were leading his people to destruction, 
yet crying, *' Father forgive them for they know 
not what they do/' Higher than this, our thought 
of love cannot reach. And herein is a Gospel for 
humanity, a Good News for the race if we can 
believe that in this manifestation of unconquer- 
able love, he was "the likeness of the unseen God," 
and that God was like Jesus. Could God himself 
be more loving if revealed in a human life? 

This Jesus, strong, pure, and loving, stands be- 
fore us, our very brother-man. We find in him, 
moreover, a perfect balance and symmetry of char- 
acter. Who is this young rabbi-carpenter, who lays 
aside his tools and goes out to call all men to be his 
brothers and children of his Father in Heaven? 

Someone may say. Are we not all divine? If so, 
what is the difference between Jesus and ourselves? 
Yes, I know that God is in me — as a sinner that is 
being saved. But God was in Jesus as a Saviour of 
sinners. Every human being is created in the image 
of God. The Father and his children share a com- 
mon life. God, Jesus and all mankind are spiritu- 
ally akin, for God is immanent in all. Jesus repre- 
sents the fullness, the completion, the supreme mani- 
festation of the immanence of God in human life. 



20 FACING THE CRISIS 

There Is a moral world of difference between the 
best of his followers, who cries that he Is "the chief 
of sinners," and him who can say, "Thy sins are 
forgiven thee," "Come unto me and I will give you 
rest." 1 

Think of his spiritual finality. Jesus Is never 
out of date. He Is humanity's eternal contempo- 
rary. If he were merely a good man, a well-mean- 
ing carpenter of Galilee, an unlettered peasant, we 
ought now after nineteen centuries of progress to 
be turning out from Oxford and Cambridge, Yale 
and Harvard, Paris and Berlin, better men than 
Jesus. In what other historic character could we 
transfer every attribute to God without a sense 
of blasphemy, and dare to say God was like him? 
If we can be sure that God eternally Is what Jesus 
was here on earth, this Is for us an eternal Gospel. 
Think of a God as loving as Jesus, with as tender a 
personal care, marking the sparrow's fall, number- 
ing, as It were, the hairs of our heads. Think of 
a God like Jesus In his moral distinctions, hating 
hyprocrlsy and sin, yet loving the sinner. In his 
moral attributes what more can we conceive of 
God? And let us remember that In the question 
of Jesus' divinity, It Is not a mere estimate of an 

^ "We should expect that God would manifest himself in such a 
soul for the guidance and salvation of men. When we turn to the 
records of Jesus Christ we are enabled to look into his soul ; and 
there for the first time the immanence of God becomes a trans- 
parent reality. The distinctive marks of his consciousness as 
compared with ourselves and the best of men are three: i. He is 
not conscious of sin. 2. He enjoys an unclouded communion with 
God; he and his father are never separated in will or act. 3. He 
alone exists, only to save and serve humanity." R. F. Horton, "My 
Belief," p. 109. 



JESUS CHRIST 21 

historic person that is at stake, but the character of 
God himself, our way of construing the universe, our 
attitude to humanity, the meaning and destiny of 
life itself. Your casual opinion or estimate of So- 
crates or Buddha, of Bacon or Shakespeare mat- 
ters little; but what you think of and do with Jesus 
becomes for you the test of life and the touch-stone 
of destiny. For he is the ideal realized. Who is 
this who so affects or determines our relation to 
God and man, to life and destiny? Has he the 
message we need in facing the crisis in the world 
today? 

2. Jesus* Teaching. He has enlarged for man- 
kind the conception of God, of man, of duty, and 
of destiny. 

Jesus enlarged our conception of God, He puri- 
fied, unified, vitalized, and raised it to its highest 
power. He made God as Father real to humanity. 
The idea of God has been to the philosopher a postu- 
late, an hypothesis, a first cause, an explanation, or 
an abstract absolute. To religious people, the full 
realization of God had been prevailingly perverted 
or confused, by animism, polytheism, pantheism, en- 
slaving legalism and a chaos of conflicting ideas and 
superstitions. Jesus gathered all the thoughts and 
experiences of men into one glorious and vital unity 
of God as Father. He so introduces us to God, 
so shares his experience with us and so makes us 
acquainted with him that God becomes for us the 
central certainty of all life. 

Jesus teaches the inestimable worth of man as 
God's child, made in his image, capable of fellow- 



22 FACING THE CRISIS 

ship with him, with the expanding power of an 
endless life. For him every man is of incalculable 
spiritual value, worth all the love of God and worthy 
of his own infinite sacrifice. Emerson tells us that 
one alone knew the worth of a man. In all previous 
history man had been cheap, enslaved, exploited, 
slain by thousands in battle, offered on the altars of 
the lust, cruelty, and greed of his fellow-men. Jesus 
alone measures his full worth in the purpose of God. 
In the light of his teaching even the lowest slave be- 
comes **the brother for whom Christ died.'* 

The modern world has confirmed the estimate 
he placed upon man. He taught the native spir- 
itual equality and democratic right of opportunity 
of all men, and as Benjamin Kidd reminds us, 
"around this doctrine every phase of the progres- 
sive political movements in our civilization has cen- 
tered for the last two centuries." 

He lifts our conception of duty. He raises man's 
life to new moral heights of possibility and places 
a new ethical ideal before humanity. And yet this 
humanly impossible standard seems natural to him 
and. In his presence, possible for us. He makes 
us joyously confident to dare the humanly impossi- 
ble. Fearlessly he sweeps aside or criticizes as In- 
adequate the most authoritative known standards 
of morality with his moral imperative, ''/ say unto 
you." He places clear and firm before us, as an 
Alpine snow peak, moral altitudes which without 
him are Inaccessible. 

In his call to duty, reinforced by the categorical 
Imperative of conscience within, and the moral or- 



JESUS CHRIST as 

der of the universe without, we seem to hear the 
very voice of God. Who is this that stands at the 
moral summit of the centuries? 

He creates a new conception of destiny as he 
flings wide before us the entrance to endless life. 
He makes no labored proof nor cold argument for 
immortality. Beside the guesses and gropings and 
wavering uncertainties of the philosophers, he of- 
fers the sure and blessed hope of an eternal life 
already begun here on earth. He offers no mere 
selfish personal blessing in a future heaven, but the 
mighty concept of God, man, and duty united and 
realized In a universal and eternal Kingdom of God, 
here and hereafter. Relnhard bases the argument 
for his divinity solely upon this conception of the 
Kingdom. Who Is this unlettered Galilean peasant 
who proposes a Christian social order involving 
the moral organization of all mankind? His con- 
cept embraces a sphere so wide that it Is confined 
by no Pharisaic sect or clique or Jewish prejudice, 
but would embrace all men of all races and all re- 
ligions. Here is a kingdom already within us yet 
endless as the ages, high as the purpose and plan of 
God and deep as human need and sin. Royce asks 
where we can find "a cause, all-embracing, definite, 
rational, compelling, supreme, certain, and fit to 
centralize life." To whom shall we go, save to 
him who flings this challenging program before us 
as the highest conceivable goal for humanity?^ 

^*Mr. H. G. Wells in a recent article on the six greatest men in 
history says of Jesus, "His is easily the dominant figure in his- 
tory. ... A historian without any theological bias whatever, 
should find that he simply cannot portray the progress of hu- 



24 FACING THE CRISIS 

How high Is Jesus' ethical standard! What a 
ureadth and sweep It embraces, appealing equally 
to Orient and Occident, to wise and Ignorant, rich 
and poor, to men of all races, all ages and genera- 
tions alike! And how adaptable It Is; not cramped 
or confined In rigid rules, but spacious In eternal 
principles, motivated by love, freed by the concept 
of liberty, containing the element of progress, and 
mighty with the dynamic of divine power. How 
final is his moral Imperative ! How much have 
twenty centuries added to his ethical standard? His 
word seems to stand complete and final in eternal 
truth. 

Who is this young carpenter-rabbi, this peasant 
who sits on the hillsides of Galilee and proclaims 
eternal truth for humanity, to whom we turn today 
with the words, "To whom else shall we go? Thou 
hast the words of eternal life.''? To whom shall 
we turn for the ultimate spiritual standards of life? 
To Moses or Isaiah, to Buddha, Confucius, or 
Mohammed? Can we find the full spiritual mean- 
ing of life unfolded by Socrates, by Plato or Aris- 
totle, by Marcus Aurellus or Epictetus, by Kant 
or Hegel, by Dante or Shakespeare, by Nietzsche 
or Haeckel? To whom else can we turn for life? 

manity honestly without giving a foremost place to a penniless 
teacher from Nazareth. ... A historian like myself finds the 
picture centering irresistibly around the life and character of this 
simple, lovable man. . . . The permanent place of power which 
he occupies is his by virtue of the new and simple and profound 
doctrine which he brought — the universal loving Fatherhood of 
God and the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is one of the 
most revolutionary doctrines that has ever stirred and changed 
human thought. . . . The world began to be a different world from 
the day that doctrine was preached." — The American Magazine, 
July, 1922, p. 14. 



JESUS CHRIST 26 

Who, other than Jesus, completes the whole sweep 
of our thought of God, of man, of duty, and of 
destiny, and unifies them in one eternal Kingdom 
of Love? 

3. His Unique Relationships. If we read afresh 
the records of his life, it seems evident that Jesus 
stands in a unique relation both to God and to man. 
We shall confine our references here to the first 
three gospels.-^ W^hether we examine the claims he 
is reported to have made, or those made for him 
by his followers, or the overwhelming impression 
he made upon his contemporaries, or the functions 
he fulfills, he actually brings God to man and man 
to God. He is the supreme revelation of God and 
the Saviour of man. 

*We have better manuscripts, both as to quality and quantity, 
written nearer to the events described, than we possess of any 
other ancient character or writer. Of the plays of Eschylus we 
have some fifty manuscripts, none of them complete; of Sophocles 
about a hundred, but only seven of value; of Euripides, Cicero 
and Virgil some hundreds. But of the four Gospels and of the 
New Testament in the original Greek, we have over three thou- 
sand manuscripts and, with their ancient translations, more than 
twelve thousand copies to consult. Moreover, these stand chrono- 
logically nearer the events they record than the manuscripts of the 
classics. The earliest manuscript Ave have of Sophocles was writ- 
ten fourteen hundred years after his death; of Euripides sixteen 
hundred years, and of Plato, thirteen hundred years after he lived. 
Of Virgil, the best of the classics, we have no extant manuscript 
written within a hundred years as near the lifetime of the author 
as in the case of the New Testament manuscripts. Of the manu- 
scripts of Aristotle, we have only those written within two and a 
half centuries of his death. Yet none of us seriously doubts the 
worth and authenticity of these classic writers. We have their 
essential message and can estimate its value. As John Stuart Mill 
well says, "It is of no use to say that Christ, as exhibited in the 
Gospels, is not historical, and that we know not how much of what 
is admirable may have been added by the traditions of his fol- 
lowers. Who among them was capable of inventing the sayings 
ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and character revealed 
in the Gospels?" Cf. Bishop Welldon, Nineteenth Century, Oct. 
1907. 



26 FACING THE CRISIS 

In his relation to God, he alone fully knows God 
and completely reveals him. "All has been handed 
over to me by my Father : and no one knows the Son 
except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father 
except the Son, and he to whom the Son chooses 
to reveal him." ^ 

In his relation to man, he Is the Messiah of the 
Jews, the hope of Israel, the light of the Gentiles, 
prophesied through the centuries. John the Bap- 
tist, of whom it was said that there was ''none 
greater born of woman," is less than the least in his 
new Messianic Kingdom. According to the record 
of his contemporaries, this claim to Messiahship he 
repeats In the face of death: upon it he staked his 
life, and for it he died. He is the fulfiller of the 
law and the prophets, of the Old Covenant which 
culminates in him, and by his death he inaugurates a 
New Covenant of grace and truth, which super- 
sedes the law of Moses. He turns a new page of 
history for all mankind and men date their docu- 
ments and divide time by his birth. 

As Son of Man, he is the representative of a new 
humanity. As Saviour, he comes to seek and to 
save the lost among men. He satisfies the human 
heart. Who is this that is able to say, "Come unto 
me, all who are laboring and burdened, and I will 
refresh you. Take my yoke upon you and learn 
from me, for I am gentle and humble In heart, and 
you will find your souls refreshed; my yoke is kindly 
and my burden light." ^ 

^Matt. 11:27. 
^Matt. 11:28-30. 



JESUS CHRIST 27 

Who but the yery Master of the heart would 
dare to say, "Whosoever shall confess me before 
men, him will I confess before my Father."? "If 
anyone comes to me and does not hate his father 
and mother and wife and children and brothers and 
sisters, aye and his own life, he cannot be a disciple 
of mine: whoever does not carry his own cross and 
come after me, he cannot be a disciple of mine.'* 
He is greater than John, "greater than Jonah," or 
the prophets of the Old Testament, "greater than 
Solomon" in all his glory, greater than David, 
Israel's greatest king, who calls him "Lord." 

By his standard men will be judged. The des- 
tiny of men will be according to what they do to 
him as he identifies himself with all humanity, the 
least of these his brethren. His glad tidings of 
life are to be proclaimed to all the world, and even 
the loving act of an outcast woman, who breaks 
an alabaster cruse of ointment and anoints his 
weary feet, shall be told with the telling of his good 
news in distant climes to the end of time. Have 
not the centuries borne out these sweeping and stu- 
pendous claims? 

As the writer has traveled among the students 
of more than twenty countries for the last twenty- 
five years, he has observed one supremely significant 
movement in the religious realm extending around 
the world. In the spiritual sphere the world is be- 
ing very slowly but surely Christianized. The stu- 
dent world is not being converted to Buddha, to 
Confucius, or to Mohammed. There is a "World's 
Student Christian Federation." There is no 



28 FACING THE CRISIS 

World's Student Buddhist, Confucian, Mohamme- 
dan, or Hindu Federation. Christ only is becom- 
ing supreme in the spiritual sphere, and there is 
no other to whom the students of the world are 
turning In spiritual hunger to find a rational and 
vital relation to God in personal renewal and so- 
cial redemption. 

Are the statements of the unique relationships of 
Jesus being fulfilled or disproved by the centuries? 
Does he seem to speak as a misguided enthusiast? 
As we test these claims pragmatically, does he or 
does he not actually in experience bring God to man? 
Does he or does he not bring man to God, as 
throughout the centuries he saves the sinful ? Who 
is this who stands in unique relation to God and 
man, claimed or implied on almost every page of the 
narrative, varied in a hundred phrases and figures, 
and interwoven with his acts and teachings? 

4. The Historic Effects of His Life. Have the 
centuries since he lived been proving or disproving 
his claims? What has been done toward the aboli- 
tion of slavery, the uplift of childhood, womanhood, 
manhood? What has been done for the sick, the 
poor, the ignorant and the sinful that Is traceable 
to his influence? 

Slavery was first mitigated and finally abolished 
by the progressive application of the principles of 
Jesus, in spite of the long defense of the system 
by some of his misguided followers because of their 
vested interests. When Jesus entered the world 
slavery was practically a universal institution. He 
gave mankind a new conception of God as Father, 



JESUS CHRIST 29 

of man as brother, and of life conceived under a 
new principle of liberty. Within a century the 
condition of slaves had been ameliorated in Rome. 
Chiefly as the result of the agitation of his follow- 
ers slaves were finally freed in every Christian 
country and ultimately even in the dark continent 
of Africa. 

Womanhood has been uplifted through his in- 
fluence.^ Among the ^wt hundred million women 
of over half the human race in the continents of 
Asia and Africa, under the ethnic religions, not one 
has to the full her God-given rights, apart from 
the application of the principles of Jesus. Jesus 
gave for all time a new status to womanhood. Un- 
der the influence of his teaching, monogomy became 
gradually prevalent, marriage was held sacred, sex- 
ual morality was lifted to a higher plane and the 
home possessed a new sanctity. Woman, who for 
centuries had been the toy or drudge of man, was 
increasingly given her rightful place in religion, in 
education, in art, in law, in all life. 

The sick have been cared for and a vast minis- 
try of healing has come down the centuries and 
extended to the limits of the world under the in- 
fluence of his teaching and example. 

The poor have been uplifted. Even the exalted 
Plato says that "the poor should be expelled from 

*Even Plato believed in a community of wives. Aristotle ranked 
woman between man and the slave. Confucius in his own un- 
happy home never fully conceived of the worth of womanhood 
nor saw the high sanctity of marriage. Buddha gave thanks that 
he had not been born in hell, as vermin, or as woman. In Hindu- 
ism, the code of Manu permitted woman no equal place with man. 
Under Islam, with its polygamy, its slavery, and its sensuous con- 
ception even of heaven, a blight has fallen upon womanhood. 



30 FACING THE CRISIS 

the markets and the country cleared of that sort 
of animal." But Jesus offers comfort to the op- 
pressed, and boldly arraigns the selfish rich. His 
gospel is a good news for the poor. The record of 
the ministry of his true followers to them would 
fill many volumes; from the sharing of their pos- 
sessions in their early enthusiasm for humanity even, 
to the present day they have continued Christ's com- 
passionate work for the multitudes. He calls not 
only for the palliatives of charity but for funda- 
mental social justice for all. 

The ignorant have been enlightened and up- 
lifted by his teaching and by the application of his 
principles to life. Jesus sought to make men whole 
in mind, as well as in body. The introduction of 
Christianity with the translation of the Bible proved 
a powerful educational factor in the civilization and 
progress of the half-barbarous peoples of early Eu- 
rope. Under the missionary impulse of Christ's 
teaching, more than two hundred languages have 
been reduced to writing among savage tribes in 
Africa and isolated portions of the globe, and Chris- 
tian schools and colleges have been founded by 
thousands in scores of lands. 

The sinful have been saved, and spiritual regen- 
eration has been experienced by multitudes who 
have sought to follow Jesus' way of life. His work 
of moral uplift has steadily gone forward in indi- 
viduals, in nations, and in human society. Can any- 
one deny that his influence has been the chief factor 
in the moral renewal and spiritual transformation 
of men for the last nineteen hundred years? 



JESUS CHRIST 31 

After tracing through the centuries the results of 
his life and teachings upon slavery, upon the uplift 
of childhood, womanhood, manhood; upon the sick, 
the poor, the Ignorant, the sinful, and upon all 
classes and conditions of men; then ask if his 
influence has not done more to regenerate mankind 
than all other influences combined.^ If so, do not 
the cumulative historic effects of his life tend in- 
creasingly to show that he was the supreme revela- 
tion of God? 

5. He Transcends his Environment and Limit a- 
tions. Men are usually made by their environ- 
ment, limited by the circumstances of their lives. In 
some strange way Jesus transformed and tran- 
scended the limitations of his life. In the factors 
that contribute to the making of a man, we may 
study his race and family, his time and place, his 
education and opportunity. Let us note how Jesus 
rises above them all.^ 

His race was probably the most hated and perse- 
cuted, the most bigoted and provincial In the world. 
Yet, though a Jew, he becomes the one universal 
man uniting Orient and. Occident, appealing equally 
to East and West. In him there is neither Jew nor 
Gentile, bond nor free, male nor female. He be- 
comes the symbol of unity and universality. 

His family was that of a peasant carpenter, yet 
for all time he gives a new and Infinite content to 

^As Mr. Lecky shows, those "three short years have done more 
to regenerate and to soften mankind than all the disquisitions of 
the philosophers and all the exhortations of the moralists." 

""See "Maker of Men," G. S. Eddy, pp. 12-17. Also "My Lord 
and Savior Jesus Christ," by J. Frank Manly, to whom we are in- 
debted here. 



S2 FACING THE CRISIS 

the words "Father," "Son," and "brother." He 
widens the thought of the family to a universal 
Kingdom of Love, a commonwealth of mankind. 

Let us note how he transcends his time and place. 
He had less than three years of public life in which 
to do his work in the world; less than any other 
great world leader. Socrates taught for some forty 
years; Plato for fifty; Aristotle had a long life and 
filled libraries with his learning. Jesus seems to 
outlive time and founds an eternal Kingdom. His 
place was a little, conquered, Jewish province in 
despised Galilee, as small as an American or an 
English county, yet he embraced the world in his 
thought and plan. 

His education at most was only that of the vil- 
lage school. "How knew this man letters having 
never learned?" And how pathetically limited and 
straightened was his opportunity. He was a mem- 
ber of a subject race and a crushed people who were 
bound by oppressive legalism, where every innova- 
tion was resented and opposed by reactionary 
scribes and Pharisees, priests and Levltes. He was 
cut off from the earth by his fellow-men before his 
life work had fairly begun, leaving no book nor 
written word, no formal institution nor organization; 
yet how he transcends his environment. 

He was no moralist^ and yet he stands supreme 
in the moral sphere. It Is he who creates the 
world's highest moral standard. He, and he 
alone, is the illustration and embodiment of man's 
ethical ideal. The supreme revelation of truth is 
thus realized In a person. 



JESUS CHRIST 33 

He was no professional religionist or priest, yet 
he stands supreme in the realm of religion. If we 
turn to the ethnic faiths, or to atheism, agnosticism, 
pantheism, pessimism, positivism, or materialism do 
we find anything in these or in any modern system 
that can at once provide a rational ground for re- 
ligious belief for the educated and satisfy the deep- 
est needs of the masses of our common humanity? 
Jesus stands ''the highest in the highest realm." In 
the moral and spiritual sphere he is supreme. 

He was no writer, yet he is more quoted than any 
author in history and his words are repeated to the 
very ends of the world. They are being read today 
in some seven hundred languages and tongues, and 
form the one universal book of humanity. No man 
has ever laid down his life In Africa to translate 
Aristotle, Kant or Hegel, nor any other great leader 
of thought, but hundreds have died to carry the 
words of Jesus to the ends of the world. More than 
two hundred languages have been reduced to writ- 
ing in order to embody his life-giving message. 

He was no architect, yet the carpenter of Naza- 
reth has somehow become the master-builder of time. 
The great cathedrals of the world were erected for 
his worship — St. Sophia, St. Peter's, and St. Paul's ; 
Milan, Cologne and Amiens ; Canterbury and West- 
minster, and the masterpieces of architecture were 
reared in his praise. 

He was no artist, yet the works of the great mas- 
ters were dedicated to him. Fra Angelico, Raphael, 
Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo and the great- 



84 FACING THE CRISIS 

est of the old masters seem to attain their highest 
under his Inspiration. 

He was no poet, yet he makes poetry the posses- 
sion of the common people. He lends a new 
rhythm to life, and teaches the human heart to sing. 
Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Browning, Tennyson, 
Whittier and a host of sfreat writers with a spirit- 
ual message are inspired by him. 

He was no musician^ yet Haydn, Handel, Beetho- 
ven, Bach, Wagner and Mendelssohn often reach 
their highest in the hymns, symphonies and oratorios 
In his praise. 

He was no social dreamer j yet his life and teach- 
ing have created a social conscience and furnished 
a motive and dynamic for a growing movement in 
the world today. After sixty generations. It is still 
gaining momentum and becoming the greatest social 
force In human life. As Washington Gladden says, 
he plants a social standard on the further side of 
twenty centuries and bids kings, lawgivers, prophets, 
and statesmen march on with all their hosts until 
they attain it.^ 

He had no home, yet he creates the Christian 
family and secures its sanctity and Its safety through 
a new conception of marriage. Before the degen- 
eracy of Greece and Rome, the bestiality of pagan- 
ism, the sensuality in some of the ethnic religions, 

^ Jesus is the ideally socialized personality. He completely identi- 
fies himself with the welfare of all mankind. He exhibited the 
complete social attitude in all relationships. His Golden Rule is 
the perfect expression of socialization, for it sets the standard of 
one's own sense of personality as that by which one's attitude 
toward others is to be measured. Jesus is for all generations the 
norm. — Scares, "Social Institutions and Ideals of the Bible," pp. 
376-378. 



JESUS CHRIST 35 

and the growing laxity of modern divorce, he holds 
up the highest ideal conception of marriage not as 
legalized licentiousness but as what *'God hath joined 
together." It is an original relationship divinely 
ordained. 

He had no wide human opportunity of culture or 
travel. He was no versatile Greek nor cosmopoli- 
tan Roman, no citizen of Athens or Alexandria, but 
lived his life in the isolation of village farmers and 
fishermen. Yet no one in all history has such 
strange power of self-identification with all mankind 
— with the suffering, the poor, the sinful, with little 
children, with men In all walks of life, in all times, 
in all nations. All claim him as theirs and seek to 
vindicate their position by appeal to his standards. 

Who then Is this who seems ever to rise above 
the narrowing, cramping limitations of a peasant 
carpenter, with a life transcendent, universal and 
divine ? 

In spite of all these limitations, how overwhelm- 
ing was the Impression he made upon his contem- 
poraries. Jesus had come to have for them the 
value of God because he performed the function of 
God. So overmastering is this impression that 
Jesus makes, that even where men cannot philosophi- 
cally or theologically account for the mystery of his 
person, he yet commands and compels them by his 
constraining love, as they say, 

"If Jesus Christ is a man, — 
And only a man, — I say 
That of all mankind I cleave to Him 
And to Him will I cleave alway. 



36 FACING THE CRISIS 

"If Jesus Christ is a God, — 
And the only God,— I swear 
I will follow Him through heaven and hell, 
The earth, the sea, and the air!" 

One test of truth is to assume the opposite and see 
where such an hypothesis leads us. Let us suppose 
that Jesus was only a good man, a well meamng 
carpenter of Nazareth, but not the supreme revela- 
tion of the Father and quite mistaken in his con- 
ception of a loving, personal God. Whither does 
such a view lead? It would leave us with a Christ- 
less God, unmanifested and unknown. For if God 
was not as fully revealed in him as is possible within 
the limits of a human life, then he is nowhere ade- 
quately manifested. Like the men of Athens^we 
would be left worshiping at the altars of an ''un- 
known God." If in Jesus we may know what God is 
like, all life is immovably centered, and in him we 
have seen the very "portrait of the invisible God." 
If in his cry on Calvary, "Father, forgive them for 
they know not what they do," we see not the very 
love of God, then we are not sure of that love and 
we are left with an unmanifested God. It is not 
primarily a question of what honor we would do to 
Jesus, or to what category we would assign him, but 
it is our conception of God himself and our relation 
to him that is at stake. 

If the beautiful teaching of Jesus was only the 
mistaken groping after truth of a pious carpenter, 
then what probabihty have any of us of finding 
ultimate truth? What kind of God does it leave 
us with if the world's highest spiritual progress for 



JESUS CHRIST 37 

the last nineteen centuries has been based upon an 
untruth? Has the consensus of opinion of the 
Church throughout the centuries been false? If 
the lower view of Jesus as in no unique sense divine 
is true, why, when thoroughly tested over and 
again, has this interpretation so repeatedly failed? 
From the second century to the present a few have 
ever held this view. Yet it has never gained ground 
nor been able to hold the heart of humanity. It 
has never offered a glowing hope to man nor roused 
him to a mighty enthusiasm. It has not produced 
the noble army of martyrs nor the solid phalanx 
of the missionary host. Who has it sent to die 
in Africa to uplift savage tribes? It seems to 
have no message for the Dark Continent. The 
missionaries of the world today, like the martyrs 
of the early Church, are motivated by the constrain- 
ing love of a Divine Son of God, a living Christ, 
and a Saviour who saves. The Church through 
nineteen centuries has stood in solidarity and in 
historic continuity with the record of the Gospels, 
the unswerving belief of the Epistles, and the wit- 
ness of his contemporaries in the faith of the Son of 
God. 

6. Christ the Completion of Human Experience. 
He completes the broken arch of science. Science 
is rearing before us a vast temple of human learn- 
ing. Through centuries of toil, by patient investi- 
gation it rises upward. The arch of science ascends 
toward one central truth that would complete the 
span of knowledge and make it whole. But, as 
Hamack shows, "to the questions of why, whence 



38 FACING THE CRISIS 

and whither, science can give no answer.'* Descrip- 
tive science classifies that which is and has been. 
Jesus unfolds that which is not yet fully realized 
in the natural order, but is yet to be. The ques- 
tion of final harmony, in an all-embracing princi- 
ple which shall reconcile all differences, lies beyond 
science, but must be man's quest. 

The writer spent an evening recently, during a 
student conference at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, 
looking through the great Yerkes telescope, the 
largest of its kind In the world. We turned the 
superb instrument on the star Vega, from which 
the lIjB^ht that reached us that night had been on 
its way, the astronomer told us, for fifty years, 
though traveling at the rate of seven times around 
the earth in a second. Next we turned the instru- 
ment upon a nebula from which the light now reach- 
ing us had started before Washington was born; 
then upon a neighboring group of four suns, from 
which their present light had been coming from be- 
fore the time of Columbus. But In another quar- 
ter there was a dim spot of light which contained 
myriads of stars and a Milky Way of suns as vast 
In extent as all the stars visible in our sky, from 
which the light that reached us that night had been 
on its way k)r over a million years. Here was 
vastness of space and power that staggered the 
Imagination. Yet neither telescope nor microscope 
nor all the Investigations of science can of them- 
selves interpret the spiritual meaning of life for us. 
This Is the work of Jesus. If his Interpretation of 
God and man and the purpose of life is true, all is 



JESUS CHRIST 39 

complete and we see life whole and lit with meaning. 

Christ is the keystone of philosophy, which has 
sought in vain throughout the centuries for some 
final principle to explain and unify its world, to 
find it indeed a uni-verse and not a multi-verse, a 
cosmos and not a chaos, with complete and ade- 
quate meaning. And yet philosophy itself can only 
find the crown and completion of life in a loving, 
intelligent will, in such a revelation of the source 
and ground of existence as we find in Jesus Christ. 
Are any of the systems of philosophy, or all com- 
bined complete without his interpretation of life, 
or are they sufiScient without a loving God such as 
Jesus reveals? ^ 

He is the keystone of art. Art strives to realize 
and interpret some final ideal, some absolutely satis- 
fying object. It seeks the contemplation of per- 
fect beauty. Its quest is some image adequate to ex- 
press the world's ruling principle. Where do we 
find this ? Only in Christ do we see the final symbol 
and image of God, the satisfying object of contem- 
plation and worship which incomplete human art 
must ever crave. 

*Cf. William Temple, in "Men's Creatrix," pp. 1-4, 258-259, 351- 
354. "We see how science and art and ethics and the philosophy 
of religion present converging lines which though converging can 
never by the human mind be carried far enough to reach their 
meeting point, but that that meeting point is offered in the fact 
of Christ. Here is the pivot of all true human thought; here is 
the belief that can give unity to all the work of mind. The 
creative mind in man never attains its goal until the creative 
mind of God, in whose image it was made, reveals its own nature 
and completes man's work. Man's search was divinely guided all 
the time, but its completion is only reached by the act of God 
himself, meeting and crowning the effort which he has inspired." 
—Page 354. 



40 FACING THE CRISIS 

He IS the keystone of morality, which demands a 
life of love and fellowship. But for the realiza- 
tion of such a life some adequate power is needed 
to regenerate the individual, to create an ideal so- 
ciety, and to bind it together in love. This we find 
in Christ alone, the Saviour of the individual and 
the founder of the Kingdom of God. His Kingdom 
gives us the ultimate social ideal involving the moral 
organization of mankind, united by the motive of 
love. 

And lastly, he Is the keystone of religion. For 
the last five thousand years of human history, re- 
corded on the monuments of Egypt, written in the 
sacred books of the East, and witnessed still in the 
vast multitudes of weary pilgrims in their search 
for truth throughout Asia and other lands, religion 
has ever been seeking rest in a God of absolute 
power and love. Apart from Jesus Christ, man 
seems to be separated from God and his fellow-men 
by his own sin and ignorance. Christ alone com- 
pletely bridges this gulf of separation, calls man 
back to God, reconciles him with his brother and 
completes the arch of religion, in a God of power 
and love equal to the whole world's need. Thus all 
human experience, in science, philosophy, art, moral- 
ity, and religion, is like an arch in one grand temple 
of humanity, as yet broken and incomplete, needing 
but the single keystone of Christ as the supreme 
revelation of one infinite, loving, intelligent Will to 
complete the span, to enable us to see life steadily, 
and see it whole. As Browning says : 



JESUS CHRIST 41 

"I say the acknowledgement of God in Christ 
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
All questions in this world and out of it, ^^ 
And has, so far, advanced thee to be wise. 

7. He Meets the Test of Personal Experience. 
Jesus' teachings and claims may be submitted not 
only to objective historical examination, but to sub- 
jective verification. By their fruits we may know 
them. We may put to the test the question whether 
Jesus was the supreme revelation of God or not, by 
asking whether he alone fully meets the three spir- 
itual needs of life— for the past, the present, and 
the future. The writer desires to speak here per- 
sonally and with perfect frankness. For the past I 
need forgiveness and the sense of reconciliation; 
for the present I need deliverance in the midst of 
an overwhelming moral conflict; for the future I 
crave a sure and certain hope that life has adequate 
meaning and a moral purpose here and hereafter. 

I look back on a past of failure and of guilt that 
entails suffering to myself and to others. And that 
inexorable past I cannot relive or undo. Yet in 
some strange way Jesus breaks the entail. He sets 
me free from my feeling of guilt for the harm I 
have done to my own and other lives in the irretriev- 
able past, he gives me a sense of utter forgiveness, 
with a clear conscience and a new moral attitude of 
inward freedom. Somehow, whether I can explain 
it or not, I have found a new beginning of life 
through him who claimed authority to say, "Thy 
sins are forgiven thee." 

He meets my spiritual need in the present. I find 



n FACING THE CBISIS 

myself in a death-grapple with moral evil which is 
reinforced by sinful habit and heredity. The temp- 
tations of sense, the allurements of the flesh, the 
gravitation of the lower nature within are too 
strong for me. But here is one who in some strange 
way has actually set men free from the bondage of 
passion and made them victors in the moral strug- 
gle. Saul of Tarsus, speaking from the bitterness 
of long years of bondage, is but voicing the sense 
of defeat of the rest of us, and even of the great 
moral leaders of the race when he says, *'The good 
that I would, I do not. O, wretched man that I 
am, who shall deliver me?" Yet he becomes the 
glad follower of Jesus, and is able to say, "The 
law of the spirit of life in Christ has set me free 
from the law of sin and of death.'* Out of this 
experience he is able to carry the dynamic of per- 
sonal spiritual life to the continent of our savage 
ancestors in Europe. 

Jesus alone has had such an assurance of the 
futicre that he could share it with the human race. 
The bulk of mankind has been held under religions 
of fear, where dread or superstition dominate life. 
The contagious certainty of Jesus in the absolute 
goodness of God substitutes faith for fear. He in- 
troduces men to God so that they become at home 
with him. His introduction leads to life-long friend- 
ship. His message is a good news and a great hope. 
Fear is expectation of coming evil. But all con- 
tingencies are covered, and all possibilities of evil 
can be worked together for good to those who fol- 
low his way of life. He promises not only per- 



JESUS CHRIST 43 

sonal immortality, but the final consummation and 
triumph of good over evil, of right over wrong, in 
an eternal Kingdom of Good Will. The spiritual 
hopes of an enlightened humanity today are cen- 
tered in him and derived from him. 

For myself I try to think of what life would be 
to me without Jesus Christ, but I find it impossible 
to extricate myself or my conception of life from 
him. From its tap root to its tiniest tendrils life 
has become so interwoven and bound up with him 
that it is inconceivable without him. I find it diffi- 
cult to imagine the sun blotted out of the heavens, 
or the landscape of life with the light of eternal 
faith, hope and love faded from its sky. I find it in- 
tellectually almost impossible to conceive of life as 
godless, for he is to me a presence that is not to be 
put by, and in him I live and move and have my 
being. But if I were to force myself to conceive 
of Jesus and his faith in the loving Father as torn 
from me, what then? Even then I could not turn 
to materialistic atheism because I could not sum- 
mon enough credulity to embrace Its irrational con- 
ceptions, but I would be left with a soulless and 
impersonal pantheism, with a God who did not and 
could not care. Upon such a God I would turn my 
back, and even if Jesus were deluded and mistaken, 
I would render my last homage to this Galilean car- 
penter dying amid the wreck of his dreams and 
ideals with the prayer upon his lips, "Father for- 
give them, for they know not what they do." I 
would worship this defeated man as higher far, and 
holier, than a loveless God. But Jesus, and faith 



44 FACING THE CRISIS 

and love In human life, are evidence of the love of 
God, and the faith we have received from him is 
daily validated in an experience that is slowly mak- 
ing and remaking us, as it made him. 

Oh for words, for thought, for life fine enough 
to tell what Jesus is! For twenty-six years I have 
worked among the students of Asia, and in the 
later years among those of America and Europe. I 
was with the men at the front in the British and 
later in the American army. I saw much of human 
life in that ''hell" called war. In evangelistic meet- 
ings and in personal interviews I have worked among 
men of the ten great religions of the world. It has 
been a work so shallow and superficial with such 
measure of failure that I have often been ashamed 
to continue in a service that so failed to rise to such 
an opportunity. But East and West, among rich 
and poor, students and the depressed classes, I have 
seen something of life. I have known something 
of doubt and disappointment and the loss of earthly 
loved ones. But in all life I have found one cen- 
tral reajity, one foundation for faith, one experi- 
ence that interprets life and makes it whole. I 
have found one Person who brings me into right 
adjustment in the three ultimate relationships of life, 
with God, with myself and with my fellow men; 
one who is my very life. It is Jesus. 

Others may speculate and better define, but I have 
known him in my own soul since first I knew what 
life was. And I have seen him saving wrecked hu- 
manity in a score of nations, in many religions 
among all classes and conditions of men. I have 



JESUS CHRIST 45 

little interest in metaphysical speculation and no 
craving for orthodox propriety, but for myself as 
I face this man I say with all the allegiance of my 
soul, My Lord! And my God manifest in human 
life! 

Let us now sum up the evidence and ask what 
is the significance of Jesus in facing the crisis in 
the world today. Think of the character of Jesus, 
strong, pure and loving. Recall the moral discovery 
of his teaching of God as Father, of man as 
brother, of duty as the revealed will of God, of 
destiny realized in his Kingdom. Think next of his 
unique relation both to God and to man. Here Is 
one who is able to bring God to man and man to 
God, who is both Son of God and Son of Man, 
supreme revelation of God and Saviour of humanity, 
the touchstone of destiny, the standard of judgment, 
and the hope of eternal life. Think then of the 
historic effects of his life, whether or not he has 
fulfilled his claims and has made God real to multi- 
tudes of men. Think of the effects of his life on 
society, the influence of his teaching on the aboli- 
tion of slavery, on the uplift of childhood, woman- 
hood, manhood; the healing of the sick, the relief of 
the poor, the realization of social justice, the en- 
lightenment of the ignorant, the saving of the sin- 
ful. Recall the strong contrasts and paradoxes of 
his life in which he transcends his limitations and 
his environment and stands unique and alone in hu- 
man history. Contemplate the vast temple of human 
knowledge, and ask if he is not indeed the keystone 
of the otherwise broken and incomplete arch of 



46 FACING THE CRISIS 

science, philosophy, art, morality, religion, and of 
all human experience. Put his claims to the proof 
and see if he meets the test of personal experience 
for the past, the present and the future. 

Who then is this? Can we deny that God was 
in him in some unique way? Was he a mere village 
carpenter, or In truth the Christ of humanity? As 
we ask him, with his judges and persecutors of old, 
"Art thou the Christ, the anointed of God?" He 
answers clearly and simply, from the depth of his 
consciousness, "I am." And as he questions us 
like Simon Peter, *'Who do you say that I am?" are 
we not constrained to reply with Simon, "Thou art 
the Christ, the Son of the Living God"? As we 
feel the Influence of his life upon us, shall we not 
rise up at his call, "Come and follow me"? Not In 
abstract reasoning or empty theory but In actual 
experience, as we seek to follow Jesus' way of life, 
we shall find him indeed the supreme manifesta- 
tion of God, 



II 

GOD 

Is there a God? Can his existence be proved, or 
is there adequate rational ground for belief in a 
Divine Being? If so what is his nature? 

If we were asked to prove the existence of God, 
we would have to admit that philosophy alone can- 
not absolutely prove anything. As Tennyson says, 

"For nothing worthy proving can be proven, 
Nor yet disproven.'* ^ 

In the realm of mathematics, we can see that two 
and two make four; practically or mathematically we 
can demonstrate it, but philosophy cannot prove the 
necessary validity of our perception or of our rea- 
soning process. Philosophy alone cannot prove or 
disprove the existence of matter or of the soul. I 
know that I am, but cannot prove what I am. 

* "Thou canst not prove the Nameless, O ray son, 
Thou canst not prove the world thou movest in, 
Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone. 
Nor canst thou prove that thou art spirit alone. 
Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one: 
Thou canst not prove that thou art immortal, no, 
Nor yet that thou art mortal — nay, my son, 
Thou canst not prove that I, who speak with tho^ 
Am not thyself in converse with thyself, 
For nothing worthy proving can be proven 
Nor yet disproven: wherefore then be wise, 
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, 
And cling to faith beyond the forms of faith.** 

47 



48 FACING THE CRISIS 

Philosophy cannot prove or disprove either the 
existence or the character of your own mother. But 
you need no philosophical proof In the realm of 
personal experience. Philosophy did not give you 
your mother nor can it take her away. Philosophy 
does not give us God nor can it take him away. Just 
as you came to know your mother you may come to 
know God in a vital experience and In a personal re- 
lation answering to your own need. 

We shall find that God is not so much the con- 
clusion of one argument as the necessary ground 
of every argument and of all experience. As Ches- 
terton says: ''God is like the sun. He is the one 
object in the world at which we cannot steadfastly 
gaze, yet in the light of which we see everything 
else." We cannot find God by the reason alone 
as Martineau shows, any more than we can find 
the scent of a rose with our fingers. But we can find 
God in experience and then justify that experience 
upon rational grounds. As Tolstoi says, "It is not 
the mind by which we know God; it is life through 
which we come to know him." Like Donald Han- 
key, wounded and dying alone upon the battlefield, 
we may find "God! God everywhere — and under- 
neath, the everlasting arms." 

Perhaps we shall get light upon our problem if we 
assume the opposite of belief in God and see where 
the materiahstlc view of life leads us. If we can 
find no ultimate resting place in dualism, in agnos- 
ticism or in pantheism, of which lack of space for- 
bids discussion here, we shall have to choose between 



GOD 49 

a theistic or a material interpretation of the uni- 
verse. 

Let us consider for a moment the materialistic 
view of llfe.^ Let us suppose that matter and force 
make up the sum of existence, that mind is but a 
function of matter, that there is no soul to survive 
the body and no God who creates or guides the uni- 
verse. 

Does this materialistic view satisfy the mind or 
does it correspond with the facts of man's higher 
life? Can It account for the origin of matter, of 
life, of mind, in the light of their full development, 
or give an adequate cause of the marvelous universe 
about us? Does it satisfy the heart, to tell man that 
he must die as an animal, with no hope of meeting 
his loved ones again? Does It satisfy the will. If, as 
Spinoza shows, man's power is Infinitely surpassed 
by the vast universe about him, and the individual Is 
left with no possibility of realizing all the capacities 
and desires of his nature which crave life abundant 
and eternal? Does it satisfy the conscience, if, as 

*Is there any criterion by which we may judge the various 
philosophies or solutions proposed? To the realist, ideas that 
correspond with facts are true; to the pragmatist ideas that work 
are valid. The writer himself can only accept a philosophy of 
life as true which will interpret its full meaning and which will 
fully develop and satisfy the whole nature of man. It must 
meet the test of self-realization. It must satisfy the mind and be 
rational. It must satisfy the heart in its loneliness and longing. 
It must satisfy the will, as pragmatic and practical, and reenforce 
its feeble and failing endeavor. It must satisfy the conscience, as 
truly ethical. Finally, it must satisfy the religious nature in its 
longing for adjustment to life. Further we must recognize that in 
a growing world our philosophy of life must grow with our world. 
Truth is not final and fixed. It is growing, dynamic. While I 
seek the truth which will meet the tests for life as I am facing it 
now, I must look forward to growing in truth as I grow in life. 



50 FACING THE CRISIS 

Professor James shows, it ends in a wreck and de- 
nies that the moral order is supreme? Does it meet 
the demand of the religious nature, if it denies any 
ultimate object of worship, fails to disclose the 
source and ground of life, and leaves the deepest 
longings of man's nature unsatisfied? 

The materialistic view not only fails to satisfy and 
develop man's whole nature, but it also completely 
fails to bring him into right adjustment in the three 
ultimate relationships of life. By its denial of 
God it admits of no adequate source and ground of 
life; it does not raise personality to the full height 
of its possibilites, and it has always lacked social 
value; for it has not produced the great prophets, 
martyrs and reformers as the supreme servants of 
the race. It does not give us any basis for solving 
our problems in facing the crisis in the world today. 
It can offer only a stone in place of bread to hun- 
gry Russia, famished in body and soul. 

Professor Clarke in his book ''Can We Believe in 
God the Father" has shown that if there is no God 
then there is no supreme mind : the world as a whole 
has never been thought or loved or willed. If there 
were no mind apart from the brain of the individual 
then there could be no science, for science depends 
on an ordered, rational world, and it implies two 
minds, the one producing and the other understand- 
ing. If there is no God and no supreme mind, then 
nothing ever has been or ever will be fully known; 
for each individual knows but an infinitesimal frac- 
tion of reality. If there is no God then there is no 
universal heart in the universe. There could then 



GOD 51 

be no true religion, no answered prayer, no logical 
place for worship, no adequate ground of absolute 
moral obligation. As Professor Tyndall says: "I 
have noticed during years of self observation that 
it is not In hours of clearness and of vigor that 
this doctrine (of materialism) commends itself to 
my mind." It is impossible for the materialist to 
prove his point without violating the law of the 
^'pragmatic imperative." He makes use of mind 
to disprove Itself. 

Materialism has failed as a philosophy of life. 
It has failed yet more miserably as a practical way 
of living. It disproved itself pragmatically in the 
appHed doctrine of Prussian militarism in the re- 
cent war. 

Since we cannot attain to absolute proof in any 
sphere of life, let us ask if it is reasonable to be- 
lieve in God. We may start with probability as 
the guide of life and seek to verify by progressive 
experience, holding that to be true which is capable 
of repeated verification. Practically all the greatest 
thinkers have admitted the existence of God in some 
sense. The real question is. What is his charac- 
ter? Even Herbert Spencer admits that we are 
everywhere "in the presence of an infinite and eter- 
nal energy," and that, "the power manifested 
throughout the universe distinguished as material 
IS the same power which in ourselves wells up in 
the form of consciousness." At first we may take 
the word "God" to denote the cause, the ground, 
the principles and laws underlying the world. Later 
we may proceed to seek evidence of the Christian 



52 FACING THE CRISIS 

conception of God as a cosmic Spirit of creative and 
redemptive love who is working to achieve a spir- 
itual universe. 

As a basis of all thought and of practical living 
we are compelled to postulate that the universe, 
so orderly and intelligible, which everywhere con- 
forms to law, is in its implications rational and 
trustworthy. All science, all philosophy, all thought 
compel us to view the world as reasonable. We look 
out upon a universe that has sometnmg in common 
with our own mind. If then the world is intelligible 
it is not merely dead matter. There is a corre- 
spondence between a rational mind and a rational 
universe. All our education implies this, for reason 
can only exist in a reasonable world. In actual ex- 
perience, apart from the problem of evil which we 
shall consider later, we find nature rational through 
and through, from the microcosm of the atom to 
the unity of the universe as a whole. 

As Eucken shows, '^To every thinking man there 
comes the great alternative — either, or— either 
there is something higher than this humanistic cul- 
ture, or life ceases to have any meaning or value.'' 
Darwin also adds his testimony, *'If we consider the 
whole universe the mind refuses to look upon it as 
the outcome of chance." If, therefore, we are forced 
to postulate the universe as reasonable and trust- 
worthy it is because it has some rational and reliable 
ground. 

All students of philosophy are acquainted with 
the three ancient arguments for the existence of 
God — the Ontological, the Cosmological, and the 






GOD 53 

Teleological. The Ontologlcal maintains that the 
reality of God Is Involved in the idea of God. The 
Cosmological argues from the character of the world 
of cause and effect, to a first cause, God. The 
Teleological argument discerning the presence of 
order as an evidence of design, and observing that 
things conform to ends, argues the reality of a de- 
signer as its source, that God must be the single 
reason on which the ordered universe depends. If 
we add to the above three the moral and religious 
arguments, we may agree with Professor Flint, that 
*'the universe owes its existence and its continuance 
in existence to the reason and will of a self-existent 
Being who is infinitely powerful, wise and good.^' 

No single argument seems convincingly to prove 
the existence of God. Yet if I may speak personally, 
God is as real to me as my own existence, **a pres- 
ence that is not to be put by,'' the One in whom I 
live and move and have my being, the one central 
certainty of my life. If I were pressed for evidence 
I would state that for myself I believe in God for 
three reasons. Taken together I find them a three- 
fold cord not easily broken. 

First, I believe In God because of the demand of 
my entire nature and the evidence of the entire uni- 
verse that cannot be explained without God. 

Second. The God that my nature demands and 
of whom the universe gives evidence, I find increas- 
ingly revealed in human life and history through the 
great prophets of the race, culminating in the revela- 
tion of Jesus Christ. 

Third. The God that my nature demands and 



54. FACING THE CRISIS 

that human life reveals In the Jesus of history^ I 
have come to know in joyous personal experience. 
And my own experience Is confirmed and validated 
by that of thousands In every land and through 
succeeding centuries.^ 

Let me endeavor to state these as clearly and 
as simply as I can, avoiding the use of technical 
terms. 

I. My mind demands an adequate cause for the 
solid fact of the universe as It Is. I look out upon 
the world and everywhere see evidence of mind both 
in man and in nature. Thus, adequate to the whole 
rational universe, there must be a Mind as the 
cause of it, and that Mind I shall call God. 

Supposing I pick up a daily newspaper. Can I 
believe that the paper made itself or that the type 
set itself, or that it is a fortuitous work of chance? 
No, if it brings a message to my mind, that can only 
be because there Is a mind behind it, a mind that 
thought and made it. If the newspaper could not 
make itself, how then could the vast and ordered 
universe make Itself or be the work of chance? I 
pluck a '*little flower from the crannied wall'' and 
with every thinking mind before me my thought Is 
driven back to the great Mind which must be the 
cause of It, that has expressed Itself In the thought 

*Thus Tolstoi In his "Confession" says, "I only lived at those 
times when I believed in God. I need only be aware of God to 
live ; I need only to forget him or to disbelieve in him, to die. . . .. 
To know God and to live is one and the same thing. . . . And the 
light did not again abandon one. ... I returned to the belief that 
the chief and only aim of my life is to be better, i.e., to live in ac- 
cord with that Will. ... I returned to a belief in God, in moral 
perfecting, and in a tradition transmitting the meaning of life." — 
Aylmer Maude, "Life of Tolstoi," I, pp. 417-18. 



GOD 55 

and beauty of the flower and of the entire universe. 

2. My heart cries out; for comfort and com- 
panionship In its- loneliness and longing. As life 
stretches on through suffering, sorrow, sickness, 
separation and the death of earthly loved ones, ulti- 
mately I crave a "Great Companion." I look out 
upon a world of human love, the love of the mother 
for her child, the love of the patriot, the hero, the 
martyr, the saint. I see the love of Christ upon the 
cross, as he cried, "Father, forgive them for they 
know not what they do." What is the source of this 
love ? Is It from mud, from matter, from star dust, 
from "cosmic ether"? As Pascal says, "The heart 
has Its reasons of which the reason knows nothing." 
It rises "like a man in wrath against the freezing 
reason's colder part." If there Is such love In the 
universe it must be in the cause and heart of It. If 
love has been evolved in the effect, it must have been 
involved in the cause, and we are driven back with 
the men of twenty centuries of repeated Christian 
experience to a God of love, as we cry with Augus- 
tine of old, "Thou hast made us for Thyself and 
the heart is restless till it rests in Thee." 

3. My will needs help. I look out on a wide 
world of power, power immanent In every electron 
and atom and In the incalculable force of the entire 
universe. I see not only evidence of power, but 
apparently also of purpose and of plan, for It Is a 
cosmos not a chaos, a universe, not a multiverse. 
But purpose and plan as we know them in experi- 
ence are found only in connection with a personal 



56 FACING THE CRISIS 

will. Back In the heart of the universe there must 
be power, purpose and plan. 

4. My conscience rises with the categorical im- 
perative '*I ought" or in old English "I owe." To 
what or to whom do I owe it? I look within at 
conscience and see a purpose that is apparently not 
my own, for I resist it and strive against it. It 
dominates and finally overcomes me. Whence this 
purpose if not from a mighty Purposer that speaks 
in the universal and evolving conscience of the race? 
What Is the meaning of this whisper of conscience, 
and why is the world in harmony with right ? ^ 

From conscience within I look out upon a world 
of men and upon a universe that seems to give evi- 
dence of a moral order. Whence this demand of 
conscience and of a moral order save in the moral 
goodness of God? 

5. My religious nature most of all demands God. 
If religion is conceived subjectively as spiritual self 
realization, experience shows that no man can fully 
develop his personality without it. No tribe or na- 

*Erskine of Linlathen says: "When I attentively consider what 
is going on in my conscience, the chief thing forced on my notice is, 
that I find myself face to face with a purpose — not my own, for I 
am often conscious of resisting it, but which dominates me, and 
makes itself felt as ever present, as the very root and reason of my 
being. . . . This consciousness of a purpose concerning me that I 
should be a good man — right, true, and unselfish — is the first firm 
footing I have in the region of religious thought; for I cannot 
dissociate the idea of a purpose from that of a Purposer; and I 
cannot but identify this Purposer with the Author of my being 
and the being of all beings, and further, I cannot but regard his 
purpose toward me as the unmistakable indication of his own 
character. A righteous Being is at the helm if there is a moral 
purpose underlying the course of things." So Kant testifies: "Two 
things fill my soul with awe: the starry firmament above me and 
the moral law within me." 



GOD 67 

tlon has yet been found without the beginnings of 
this universal, normal human capacity and experi- 
ence. Such a book as Professor James' "Varieties 
of Religious Experience," drawn from a wide 
range of human life, leads us to the conclusion that 
religion is an objective reality and a valid experi- 
ence. We may add to the history of nineteen 
Christian centuries the longer record of Judaism. 
We may support this by the experience of India 
which for some three thousand years has held the 
unbroken conviction of God as the great reality of 
life, so sure of him that it has never needed an argu- 
ment to prove his existence. We may add the tes- 
timony of Rve thousand years of the religions of 
Egypt and of the ancient world, only to find that 
man always and everywhere is "incurably religious," 
that he prays "because he cannot help praying," be- 
cause it is as natural and as inevitable as breathing. 
Has man's universal experience of religion and his 
main motive of progress been based upon an un- 
truth?^ 



^ In the realization of God's presence in human life there is pro- 
found significance in the verse: ''Where two or three are met 
together in my name there I am in the midst." Social Psychology is 
throwing light on the process in such a fellowship. The "group 
mind" and the "social will" do not mean a mysterious, mystical 
something which hovers over the group. On the other hand, they 
represent something different from the "mob mind," the unthinking 
will of a crowd. These terms simply recognize the fact that in 
free and open-minded discussion thoughts are stimulated, solutions 
to problems are arrived at, bigger and better than any one of the 
group could have suggested or than the unrelated totality of the 
group working separately. The process, in turn, fuses the group 
into a unity of purpose and will which stimulates individual and 
united action. 

Now if the immanence of God in human life is recognized, this 
"group mind," this "social will" forged out of such a fellowship 



58 FACING THE CRISIS 

Let us take now this five-fold demand of my mind 
for an adequate Cause, of my heart for a Great 
Companion, of my will for a mighty Power, of my 
conscience for one who is morally Good, and of my 
religious nature for a God answering to my need. 
My whole nature and the whole universe demands 
God. 

If personality in man is found to consist of a 
loving, intelligent will, unified in self-consciousness; 
and if I see truth, beauty and goodness unified in 
an ordered universe, then I must conceive of God as 
an infinite thinker, lover, and wilier, the all loving 
intelligent Will, a personal God, in whom the uni- 
verse is unified and grounded.^ 

Secondly, the God that my whole nature and 
the universe demands and requires I find growingly 
revealed in human life, especially in the life and 

of earnest Christians in thought and prayer may well represent 
more of the will of God for that group than the thought of any- 
one of the group. 

^Bishop Gore in his "Belief in God" writes, "I cannot hold the 
conception of mind or of truth or of purpose or of righteousness 
except on the background of personality. ... If personality is the 
highest known thing, must not God be at least that highest thing?" 

Marcus Aurelius could write: "The world is either a welter 
... or a unity of order and providence. If the former, why do I 
care about anything else than how shall I at last become earth. 
But on the other alternative I feel reverence. I stand steadfast . . . 
I find heart in the power that disposes all." Men have felt a con- 
tradiction between the natural and the moral order, between the 
realm of nature and the realm of things, between what is and 
what ought to be, between the actual and the ideal. This contra- 
diction can only be reconciled in a free will choosing the good, 
and the two worlds at present apparently contradictory can only 
be explained by a God working out a moral purpose in a devel- 
oping world. Conscience is subordinate to an eternal goodness. 
"A power not ourselves that makes for righteousness." See Sorely 
— "Moral Values and the Idea of God." 



GOD 59 

teaching of the prophets, finally culminating in the 
revelation of Jesus. In his simple life, in his teach- 
ings, in his unique consciousness, he seems ever to 
dwell immediately In the very presence of God, and 
this faith of his was contagious. He never argues 
about God, never labors to prove him. Rather, 
he teaches men how to find him for themselves. 
Actually as an historic fact, In his presence men 
found God. Yet this experience was not dependent 
upon his physical presence and throughout the nine- 
teen centuries it has been capable of repeated veri- 
fication. 

To the mind, Jesus reveals God as all wise — 
'Tour Father knoweth"; to the heart he reveals 
him as all loving — "the Father himself loveth you," 
"Love your enemies that you may be sons of your 
Father who sendeth his rain upon the just and the 
unjust and maketh his sun to shine upon the evil 
and the good." To our weak will Jesus reveals God 
as all powerful — "All things are possible with God." 
To our conscience he Is all holy — "Holy Father," 
"Hallowed be Thy name." To our religious nature 
he is "Our Father who art in heaven." He Is thus 
"the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." 
Somehow through Jesus, historically and experi- 
mentally, we have been introduced Into an utterly 
new conception and experience of God. We have 
passed Into a realm of the certainty of experience 
that no labored argument, no cold syllogism of logic 
could give us. To philosophy God may be an hypo- 
thesis, a postulate, a cause, a first principle, an ab- 



60 PACING THE CRISIS 

solute, but sharing the experience of Jesus he be- 
comes our Father.^ 

Finally, the God that my nature demands and of 
whom the whole universe gives evidence, the God 
that Is revealed In human history, in the prophets 
and In Jesus, I have found In personal, vital experi- 
ence, for God has become to me the one central 
certainty of life. To my mind I have found him a 
God of wisdom — "How unsearchable are his judg- 
ments and his wisdom past finding out/' In my 
heart I have found that "God Is love," and love, 
creation's final law. For my weak will I have found 
that he is able to do exceeding abundantly above 
all I can ask or think. My conscience joins the 
everlasting chorus of human experience In the 
church militant and triumphant throughout the ages 
saying, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty." 
And to my religious nature he has Indeed become the 
God and Father of Jesus. 

If the reader will pardon a very personal testi- 
mony, I desire to say a word as to the reality of 

^Thus with Plato we pass from a bridge of philosophic argu- 
ment, or from a perilous "raft" on the seas of fortune, to a more 
sure "divine word," — "It seems to me, Socrates, as to you also, I 
fancy, that it is very difficult, if not impossible, in this present life 
to have clear knowledge concerning such subjects; but that, on the 
other hand, it is the mark of a faint-hearted spirit to desist from 
examining all that is said about them in every way, or to abandon 
the search so long as there is any chance of light anywhere. For 
on such subjects one ought to secure one of two things, either to 
learn or discover the truth, or, if this is impossible, at least to 
get the best of human argument and the hardest to refute, and 
relying on this as on a raft, to sail the perilous sea of life, unless 
one were able, more securely and less perilously, to make one's 
journey upon a safer vessel — upon some divine word." — Plato, 
Fhaedo, 85 C. D. Quoted from "Belief in God," by Bishop Gore, 
p. 68. 



GOD 61 

God in my own experience. In 1897 I came to the 
darkest day in my life. I had miserably failed in 
my own character and in my service. I was dis- 
couraged, bitter, rebellious. Somehow I had missed 
the mark and lost the way in life. After a sleep- 
less night, I cried to God as my Father to show 
me the way out. Then in a moment, without any 
special emotion or excitement, one simple word re- 
ceived in faith changed life forever. I did not then 
know that it was "forever" but for twenty-five years 
since that day God has been the abiding reality of 
my life and I have no fears for the future. And this 
was the word — "Anyone who drinks this water will 
be thirsty again but anyone who drinks the water I 
shall give him imll never thirst any more; the water 
I shall give him will turn into a spring of water 
welling up to eternal life." ^ The waters of this 
earth, wealth, pleasure, power, ambition, "the lust 
of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of 
life" do not satisfy, for the reason that man was 
made for higher things. But God does satisfy, for 
happiness is found in the harmonious exercise of 
function, in full correspondence with the ultimate 
environment of the soul, which is God. 

I thought how glorious that would be to "never 
thirst any more," but I could never hold out, I would 
forget and lose my grip as I had in the past. But 
then the thought came, could I trust, could I drink, 
could I live this way for one day, for I will never 
have to live but one day at a time. Yes, I said, I 

^John 4:14. Moffatt's translation which Is prevailingly fol- 
lowed throughout this book. 



62 FACING THE CRISIS 

will try It. I will test the promise and begin to 
drink, living one day at a time by faith. I will 
endeavor to live upon God, to draw my life 
from him as the spiritual environment of the soul, 
as simply as I would drink, or eat, or breathe, in 
correspondence with the physical environment. 

That day I began. Twenty-five years have passed 
but the thirst of the former years has never come 
back — no, not for an hour! There has not been an 
hour of darkness or despair, and, I mean it literally, 
not an hour of discouragement. I have often failed 
him. I have never been satisfied with myself, or my 
service, I have often sinned. It would be sheer dis- 
honesty to Imply anything else. But he has never 
failed me. And he has kept his promise. He Is my 
portion, my satisfaction, my life ; for It Is not what 
I am to him, but what he is to me that determines 
life. 

And experimentally It Is In the continuous pres- 
ent. We drink the well once for all, as It were 
(the Greek tense Is In the aorist), but thenceforth 
we drink continuously of the Inward spring. It 
does not say ''Whosoever drank In the past,'^ but 
"anyone who drinks'' and keeps drinking, for just 
so long he "will never thirst any moreJ* This ex- 
perience, or rather God himself, as revealed in 
Jesus, has become to me the perennial Inward moral 
miracle, the central certainty, the daily joyous dis- 
covery of the great adventure of life. I have made 
an almost unbelievably poor response to this experi- 
ence, but I can no more deny it or doubt God than 
I can doubt my own existence. Twenty-five years 



GOD 63 

have passed and that joy Is undlmmed. And before 
God, I He not. One thing I know, he satisfies. And 
such an experience Is possible for all, only varying In 
expression according to temperament and training. 
"If any man thirst let him come and drink/' 

The sum total of It all comes to this; that God 
Is always and everywhere like Jesus. Were it 
otherwise 

"The loving worm within its clod 
Were diviner than a loveless God." 

Were it otherwise, Jesus with his sublime love upon 
the cross, praying, "Father forgive them," would 
be higher and more divine than God himself. But 
Jesus Is a fact that must be accounted for. Our 
definition of "God'* as the adequate cause underly- 
ing the world, must be interpreted by the highest 
not by the lowest.^ Are we to place Jesus above 
God In love, or must we enlarge our definition of 
God to take In the love of Jesus and all the good, 
the true and the beautiful In life? 

We must account for the good in Jesus and the 
best in ourselves. In the end we must "accept as 
real that to which the best In us irresistibly points." 
There is that within us which we cannot deny with- 
out surrendering our moral Integrity and ceasing to 
be ourselves. "We needs must love the highest 
when we see it," and we needs must believe the best 
within our own souls and In all life. We must live 

*"The relations between man and God have, in the course of 
religious history, become more deeply personal and passionate, with 
the deepening sense of evil and spiritual distress. The soul finds 
at length its divine Companion." — Hocking, "The Meaning of God 
in Human Experience," p. 336. 



64 FACING THE CRISIS 

as though God were what our faith claims and let 
faith vindicate itself in experience. 

Here is a three-fold evidence that cannot easily be 
broken. It is interwoven in reason, in history, in 
human experience. This is why I believe in God; 
as the demand of my entire nature and of the uni- 
verse ; who is revealed in the prophets and in Jesus ; 
and found in a personal experience capable of re- 
peated verification. This God is our God. This 
God may be your God. 



Ill 

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 

How can we believe in a good God in facing the 
crisis of the world today when we see about us pain 
and misery, injustice and inhumanity, poverty, 
privation, famine and war with their waste of 
human lifef 

Is there any solution to the perennial problem 
of evil? Why should there be evil or sin in a 
good world? Can we find any meaning in a life 
thus conditioned by disease and death, any phil- 
osophy of pain, any solvent for suffering? 

Like the poor, the problem of evil is always with 
us. It touches every life. Every man who thinks i^ 
at all must face It. Down the centuries it has been 
the hardest question man has had to meet, the heavi-. 
est burden he has had to bear, the most difficult prob- 
lem of his existence. In a good world, why should 
there be any evil? Epicurus writing some twenty- 
two centuries ago well states the dilemma for all 
time: if God wishes to prevent evil but cannot, .^. 
then he is impotent; if he could but will not, he is 
malevolent; if he has both the power and the will, 
whence then is evil? 

If we were to state the answer in a sentence we 
should say, a good world must be a moral world; 
a moral world must be free; a free moral world 
must be one of gradual development under the dis- 
cipline of suffering. 

63 



66 FACING THE CRISIS 

President King, summing up the conviction of 
many writers, states what he believes to be the six 
prerequisites of moral character: some genuine free- 
dom of volition on man^s part; some power of ac- 
complishment in the direction of his volition; an 
imperfect developing environment; a sphere of 
laws ; that men should be members one of another ; 
and that therei should be struggle against resis- 
tance.^ 

If you should say, with Omar Khayyam, that you 
would shatter to bits this sorry scheme of things en- 
tire, and then remold it nearer to the hearts' de- 
sire, what manner of world would you make ? Take 
the six alternatives presented by the above prereq- 
uisites of moral character. If you had your own 
way, would you make the world free or fated? If 
you made man free to do right or wrong, and make 
mistakes, if he is to learn by his own failure, how 
could you eliminate suffering? Or again, without 
some power of accomplishment, how could you have 
any real world at all, unless there were actual re- 
sults of your acts both good and bad to test and to 
reveal character? 

Or, take the third alternative. Would you make 
the environment of nature rough or smooth, pain- 
ful or painless? If you chose the easier path and 
made life a garden of delights, fitted for lotus eaters 
and dreamers, how would you develop man apart 
from the suffering and tragedy of life to stab him 
wide awake and arouse him from his selfishness? 

^ Cf. H. C. King, "Fundamental Questions," p. 13, and "Theology 
and the Social Consciousness," pp. 30-32. 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 67 

"An imperfect, developing world Is fitted to an im- 
perfect, developing man." All life above the vege- 
table involves sensation; and sensation necessitates 
both pleasure and pain. Sensitiveness and the capac- 
ity for pain rank the creature in the scale of being. 
The higher the life the larger the capacity for suf- 
fering, and the greater the possibility of progress. 

Again, would you make a reliable world of law 
and order, or one of endless interference and spe- 
cial miracles for each individual to prevent suf- 
fering? Such a world would be a chaos and not a 
cosmos, a madhouse rather than a place for the de- 
velopment of character. The very idea of law ex- 
cludes partiality and favoritism. It implies relia- 
bility and seeming impersonality. We criticize the 
present world. But imagine a condition where all 
goodness was instantly rewarded and all evil in- 
stantly punished ! Imagine the charge of favoritism 
by those who suffered! And what test of faith or 
development would be possible for the good, what 
choice of virtue as its own reward? Wisely God 
makes his sun to shine upon the evil and the good, 
and sends his rain upon the just and the unjust. 

Again, would you make men interdependent, 
members one of another, bound together in close 
human relations, or individually separate and iso- 
lated, unable to influence one another either for good 
or evil? Would you not choose the responsibility 
and disciplinary development of real human rela- 
tionships just as they are, with the joyous love of 
friendship and family life, entailing suffering by 
virtue of the very Intimacy of these relationships, 



68 FACING THE CRISIS 

rather than the selfish isolation of an unrelated 

world? 

And lastly, would you omit the struggle and hero- 
ism of life through which, as Carlyle shows "the 
dullest day-drudge kindles into a hero"? ^^.^^^ 
moral Hfe is a struggle between good and evil, right 
and wrong, darkness and light, then the physical 
environment, if made by the fore-knowledge of a 
wise and loving omnipotent Will should contain this 
same contrast for the discipline of an evolving moral 
humanity. It must be not a soft world of ease to 
lull us to sleep, but an ever changing environment 
of cold and heat, summer and winter, sunshine and 
shadow, light and darkness, pleasure and pain, 
prosperity and adversity. 

Is not life with all its ills better than a Sahara 
of dead monotony, or a garden of deHghts? Is it 
not better than a perfect mechanism, or mechanical 
toy with no possibility of moral good or evil? Is it 
not better than a world of chance and chaos? As 
a temporary discipline for the development of per- 
manent character, could it be better? When we 
dream our dreams or write our novels or dramas, 
do we make them smooth and soft as an untroubled 
Eden, or do we create difficulties to be overcome, bat- 
ties to be fought and won, a villain in the plot and 
a hero who wins against heavy odds? Our very 
games are but inventions of obstacles to be overcome 
in the competition of struggle, and therein is their 

fascination. 

If we try to understand the possible purpose ot 
suffering, in facing the crisis in the world today, we 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 69 

can clear much of the ground by recognizing at the 
outset that, granted a loving God, personal immor- 
tality, and a moral meaning in life, all suffering is 
temporary and much of it is man-made, unneces- 
sary and removable. God made man free, but men 
enslave one another. It is not God but man who 
makes slavery, the city slum, war, and human in- 
justice. Man's greatest woes are made by himself, 
and they are removable by him. Much of the 
evil in the world cannot be explained away, but it 
can be fought away. It cannot be removed by phi- 
losophy but only by loving labor and sacrifice. The 
contradiction between the actual and the ideal, be- 
tween the natural and the moral world can be over- 
come only by the free will of man choosing the 
path of duty. Our great need is not the explana- 
tion of evil but the secret of moral mastery over it. 
So far as it is God's world we may find that it is 
good, or the means for the making of good; and so 
far as it is morally bad we shall find later that man 
has made it so. We can ask no quick and cheap 
solution. If life has infinite meaning, it may re- 
quire eternity for its full realization. A fact so 
vast as suffering may demand vast time fully to solve 
the problem or even see it in perspective. As Sien- 
kiewicz says, we are willing to suffer if only we are 
sure there is something worth suffering for that lies 
beyond.^ 

*John Fiske, speaking of the omnipresent ethical trend of the 
universe, says, "Below the surface din and clashing of the struggle 
for life we hear the undertone of the deep ethical purpose, as it 
rolls in solemn music through the ages, its volume swelled by every 
victory, great or small, of right over wrong, till in the fulness of 



70 FACING THE CRISIS 

The suffering that cannot he removed as man^ 
made and unnecessary^ cam he resolved into three 
chief forms: disciplinary, remedial or redemptive. 
Some suffering is disciplinary, as a stimulus to man's 
development; some is remedial as a result of man's 
own sin; while some is redemptive, and when soi 
recognized it may become voluntary and vicarious,, 
borne for the reclaiming of men and the making oj£ 
a better world. 

Some suffering is disciplinary. Man has two 
great teachers in every realm of life, prosperity and 
adversity, pleasure and pain, success and failure, en- 
couragement and discipline, reward and punishment, 
happiness and suffering. Of the two, which has been 
the better teacher? Pain has developed man's body 
and Its faculties. Out of conflict, as science has 
shown, almost every attribute of form and function, 
of strength and courage, of beauty and nobility has 
been evolved. The five senses have all been thus 
developed. Pain has also developed man's mind. 
It has driven him to fresh discovery and invention. 
Suffering is educative. We say, *'A burnt child 
dreads the fire." Suffering is a teacher for which 
there can be no substitute. It Is not optional or 
ele'ctive but required in the universal curriculum of 
life. None can omit it and take life's higher de- 
grees in character. 

Most of all, suffering has developed man^s moral 
and spiritual nature, for it has taught him sympathy 

time, in God's own time, it shall burst forth in the triumphant 
chorus of Humanity purified and redeemed." "Through Nature to 
God," p. 129. 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 71 

and tenderness. It is only the corals broken by the 
sea that form the living rock. The bird rises 
against a strong head-wind, as the opposing force 
becomes a lifting force. The stars shine out by 
night which are unseen by day, and the shining hopes 
of humanity break forth in the darkness of despair. 
As Shakespeare says, out of his matchless knowledge 
of life, "Sweet are the uses of adversity." We must 
admit that some suffering is disciplinary. 

Again, some suffering has been remedial. Love's 
purpose in discipline is not vindictive but educative. 
The sufferings of an Augustine, of a Francis of 
Assisi, of an Ignatius Loyola were the means of 
reclaiming them from sensuous lives to saintliness. 
History ^nd our own experience affirm that some 
suffering is remedial. 

Highest of all, suffering may become redemptiveX 
when vicariously borne for others. Socrates calmly \ 
drinks the hemlock that Greece may be free. Telem- ' 
achus springs into the arena in protest against j 
the gladiatorial games and gladly yields his life 
that this evil may be ended. The mother nurses 
her sick child, takes the disease and loses her life 
for her offspring. The hero dies for his country, 
the martyr for his cause. But each such sacrifice 
marks a milestone of advance. 

Finally Jesus appears as the one hope of man- 
kind. His short life failed to win an adequate fol- 
lowing, and his teaching, sublime as it was, was 
often uncomprehended, unappreciated or misunder- 
stood, for the world was far below his standard. 
But what his life failed to win, the seeming defeat 



72 FACING THE CRISIS 

of his death achieved. Actually and historically out 
of this deepest evil in the world has there not come 
the world's greatest good? 

The Jew looked from the baffling problem of evil 
and a world of injustice to the last judgment for 
the vindication of God. There finally good would 
be rewarded, sin would be punished, and evil de- 
stroyed. But as he stood beneath the cross of Christ, 
he who had vision saw a higher and a better way, 
not of punishment but of the divine sharing of our 
suffering, not evil destroyed but rather borne by 
love, overcome by It and converted to good. The 
cross was God's way not of annihilating evil In 
wrath but of turning the other cheek to it in long- 
suffering love. Christ's death, which seemed to cut 
short and frustrate his life purpose, finally proved 
to be the very means of accomplishing it. Thus 
through the ages one increasing purpose runs — a 
purpose of love, as creation's final law. And love 
facing a world in the making, an evolving, disci- 
plinary, and still sinful world, must suffer. There 
is no other way to redeem the ignorant and im- 
penitent. Hate may punish, selfish indifference may 
evade, but love must sacrifice to save, and by suf- 
fering win the secret and the triumph of life. 

It is thus in the cross of Christ that we see the 
final meaning of suffering. It Is here that we can 
see the very heart of God; for if God was In Christ 
then he is always and everywhere what Jesus was. 
Then a suffering Christ means a suffering God, and 
in all our afflictions he Is afflicted with us. As much 
suffering as there is in the world Is ever at the heart 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 73 

of God, borne and shared by him. All we suffer 
the Father's heart feels. In nature we see that God 
could do anything he would; in the cross we see 
that he would do anything he could. In nature we 
see his power; in the cross we see his love. Here 
is epitomized the whole meaning of suffering, the 
whole problem of evil. It is here that we learn 
the philosophy of life, that God works together 
into good all things for them that love him.^ 

In the suffering of life, like Simon of Cyrene, we 
may be constrained to bear a cross, seemingly im- 
posed upon us by blind fate or chance, apparently 
arbitrary, meaningless, which we resent as a bitter 
burden. Or, we may accept it as Jesus did, and all 
Hfe may become transformed thereby. We may, 
with the philosopher of old, say that "in suffering 
God has pitted thee against a rough antagonist that 
thou mayest be an Olympic conqueror." Thus Wil- 
liam Prescott, suddenly almost blinded in youth, 
''sang aloud in his darkness and solitude with un- 
abated cheer." With the help of others, mastering 
many volumes in foreign languages, he completed 
at last his "Conquest of Peru," and his "Conquest 
of Mexico." But his greatest work was never writ- 
ten; it was the conquest of himself. Thus to the 
Christian who sees the meaning of Christ's cross and 
accepts his own, time is conquered and his crown 
is won. The dualism and conflict of good and evil 
find their solution and harmony in the cross of 
Christ, where the divine and human meet. Here a 
God of absolute power and goodness meets the sin 

* Romans 8:28, R. V. margin. 



74 FACING THE CRISIS 

and suffering of evolving man, and the problem of 
evil is solved in the sacrifice of love. 

The meaningless cross of Simon the Cyrenian 
may become the voluntary sacrifice of the follower 
of Jesus. All suffering may thus be made vicarious. 
It may become a triumphant means to greater good, 
not only for ourselves but for others. Herein we 
may rise to lifers highest glory and may share even 
in the vicarious redemption of God.^ But this can 
only be by a venture of faith. We see but a small 
arc of the curve of human suffering in life's brief 
span, but we see enough to note the trend. We rest 
on rational ground; we see a partial solution; we 
must pass from this partial experience to the only 
complete truth which can make life valid and vic- 
torious, the absolute goodness of God. 

We must construe the universe either from cer- 
tain facts of evil or of good. "From partial proof 
we rise to the full conclusion, that good is the sun 
and evil is the cloud, and that the perfect and eter- 
nal sun is God." The short span of life offers no 
absolute proof of anything. Shall we believe in 
final evil or in ultimate good, or waver in nerve- 
less indecision? Shall we take the attitude of pes- 
simism or optimism, of hopeless unbelief or of stak- 
ing our life on the venture of faith? "Now faith 
is the supposition or working hypothesis of things 
hoped for, the testing out of things not seen." It is 
the adventure of life. It is the progressive, prag- 
matic verification of experience. And this is the 

* Colosslans i '.24.. 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 75 

victory that overcomes the evil In the world, even 
our faith. 

Some men have been baffled and beaten by what 
has seemed to them to be the evil in the world. Yet 
he who most experienced the evil of life, whose per- 
fect good was rewarded with a felon^s cross, never 
wavered In his assurance of the love of the Father 
and the ultimate goodness of life. As no other he 
sees to the very bottom of the sin of the human 
heart, yet never loses faith in men. He suffers as 
no other from the ills of life and the opposition 
of sinful men, yet he staked his life on the good- 
ness of God. As he drank to the bitter dregs the 
cup of human suffering, he said, ''the cup that my 
Father hath given me shall I not drink it?^' He was 
spared no depths of shame, desertion, betrayal or 
death; no abyss of failure of shattered hopes, of 
uttermost loss when sin was allowed to work its 
worst upon him. Yet he held fast his faith in God 
and only asked forgiveness for his enemies who were 
doing him to death. His trust is unswerving in a 
Love that penetrates nature and history and per- 
vades all life. He does not explain evil but over- 
comes it with good. He does not offer a philosophy 
of death but an experience of life. In him life Is 
epitomized. For us there is a depth of meaning in 
the reminder, "Christ also suffered.'* 

Such a faith strengthens us in facing the crisis 
in the world today. Without it In pessimism, doubt 
or agnosticism we cannot find firm footing for faith 
from which to wage victorious warfare against the 
giant evils that must be overcome, confident that 



76 FACING THE CRISIS 

the ultimate power of the universe Is behind us. 
Thus In facing the crisis of his time to Jesus It was 
God's world and It was good. He sees this vast 
complex of life as the interplay of God's purpose 
with the conflicting and colliding wills of men. In 
It any circumstance may for the moment be good or 
ill, a pleasure or a pain. But granted a good God 
of Infinite power, a developing moral personality 
in man, and the meaning of life revealed, realized 
and epitomized In Christ, then all contingencies are 
covered, all present evil may be a potential bless- 
ing, and all things work together for ultimate 
good.^ 

*A fuller treatment of this subject will be found in the writer's 
"SuflFering and the War," pp. 19-91 



IV 

IMMORTALITY 

Upon mhat grounds do you believe in a future 
life? Is there any such thing as '^a sure and cer- 
tain hope" of immortality? 

For men who were going over the top in the 
World War, the future life became a vital ques- 
tion, for ^'eternal topics had become current." For 
them it was indeed facing the crisis of life. Many 
a man asked himself the question of old, *'If a man 
die shall he live again?" This has been answered 
again and again from the time of Socrates and 
Plato and the writers of the Upanishads of India 
down to the present. Little that is original can be 
added today, but our faith gains firmer footing 
when we find that it is sustained by the experience 
of the centuries that have gone before us. 

There are many today who believe in social but 
not in personal immortality. They hold that the 
race and civilization are the product of our social 
inheritance. To this inheritance everyone in the 
past has contributed. To them, immortality means 
that nothing is lost and that each person's contri- 
bution to race progress is passed on biologically to 
his children or sociologically in the social inheri- 
tance. We are a part of all that we have met. We 
today are the embodiment of the race's experience 

77 



78 FACING THE CRISIS 

and achievements and this must satisfy our desire for 
immortality. 

While fully accepting the fact of our social in- 
heritance the writer believes also in personal im- 
mortality. He is but summing up the arguments 
of the past when he says that for himself he be- 
lieves this for the following reasons: 

I. The testimony of science to a world that is 
rational and trustworthy. All other deepest desires, 
instincts and hungers of the human life have the 
possibility of being satisfied. If this hunger for 
continued life were alone unfulfilled, it would be 
without parallel in our experience. Biologically, 
function determines structure and our present capac- 
ities and faculties have been developed by our en- 
vironment. As the climax of a long evolutionary 
process, man has sought to correspond to an eternal 
spiritual environment. If this practically universal 
desire were a mere subjective delusion, it would be 
contrary to the whole experience of the race in all 
other realms of life. 

If, as science testifies, even matter and energy are 
indestructible, how can the most priceless thing upon 
this planet, human personality, be lightly destroyed? 
The life beyond is the demand of our moral nature. 
Life's vast aspirations and capacities, unfulfilled at 
death, drive us to believe in God, in freedom and 
immortality. The disparity between our potentiali- 
ties and our present possibilities, between what we 
are and what we hope to be, can only be satisfied by 
a future life. Annihilation would be an injustice 
and an insult to the race. ''When therefore we as- 



IMMORTALITY 79 

sume, as science always does In the physical realm, 
that this is a reasonable world, we have a positive 
and assuring argument for Immortality." ^ 

2. The testimony of religion to Immortality Is 
far stronger than that of science. Add to the un- 
broken faith of nineteen centuries of Christian ex- 
perience, the longer testimony of Judaism, and the 
three thousand years of the religious experience of 
India, whose spiritual certainty has needed no proof 
of God or of the future Hfe. Recall the faith of 
five thousand years of the religious hope of Egypt, 
for even today around the ancient mummies we find 
wrapped those prayers from the Book of the Dead, 
"Let me live, O let me live I'* Let us note the belief 
in the future life in the ancient religions of Chaldea, 
Assyria, and Babylon; then add the faith of Zoroas- 
ter, the early religions of Greece and Rome, the 
myths of Scandinavia, the testimony of Csesar re- 
garding the early Britons, the traditions of the 
North American Indians and countless other tribes. 
Let us face the fact that for something like a hun- 
dred thousand years humanity has buried its dead 
in the faith of a future life, and then ask if this 
hope has been founded upon a fallacy, if this deep- 
est instinct of the human race has been a mockery 
and a betrayal. The testimony of the highest re- 
ligion to immortality is overwhelming. Its basal as- 

^See the "Assurance of Immortality," H. E. Fosdick, pp. 113-141, 
to whom we are indebted in this section. Professor James and 
Bergson have endeavored to show that the mind overflows the 
brain, that the function of the brain is not productive of thought 
but merely transmisslve, as in the case of the vocal cords in trans- 
nitting sound; that the human brain is but the temporary and 
imperfect instrument of the mind that survives it at death. 



80 FACING THE CRISIS 

sumption that the universe is beneficent argues for 
the permanence of personality. The faith of re- 
ligion has always held, 

"Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: 
Thou madest man, he knows not why, 
He thinks he was not made to die; 
And thou hast made him: thou art just." 

3. The testimony of the great leaders of the race. 
Prophets, philosophers, poets, seers, the great moun- 
tain-peak men of human history have held to this 
high hope. Thus Socrates can say : "Then beyond 
question the soul is immortal and imperishable and 
will truly exist in another world." Plato holds "Our 
soul is immortal and never at all perisheth ... of 
necessity it always exists . . . Like victors assem- 
bled together we shall enjoy a happy life." Let us 
add the testimony of the long line of philosophers 
from Socrates and Plato to Kant and Hegel. Take 
the witness of the great writers from Homer and 
Virgil, from Dante and Milton to Wordsworth, 
Tennyson and Browning. We may add the outstand- 
ing statesmen from Cicero to Cromwell, from Wash- 
ington and Lincoln to Bismarck and Gladstone and 
the vast, unnumbered army of common men who 
with these leaders of the race have held this hope 
as imperishable. "The arbitrament of the great 
spirits of the race gets its authority for us because 
they but confirm the vision of our own elevated 
hours." 

4. The testimony of Jesus Christ. He based his 
life upon the eternal. He staked everything upon 



IMMORTALITY 81 

an historic movement that was to be founded upon 
his death and resurrection and whose fulfillment 
required his living presence. What was it that burst 
from that empty tomb on the third day with the 
greatest manifestation of life that the world has 
ever seen? It was this faith in the spiritual and 
eternal that made Jesus what he was. Nineteen 
centuries of Christian progress have been based 
upon it. In the face of martyrdom and persecution, 
death and defeat, his followers have held with in- 
domitable assurance the promise, "Because I live ye 
shall live also"; and ''he that believeth in me shall 
never die." His was the assurance of one who 
already lived in eternity. And he made it com- 
municable and imperishable to multitudes of men 
not as an evanescent dream or an empty philosophi- 
cal speculation or wavering aspiration, but sustain- 
ing and unshakable, bearing the steady traffic of 
humanity from generation to generation, like the 
girders of a mighty bridge that spans a Niagara tor- 
rent that once seemed impassable. In the midst of 
all human life Jesus forever affirms, "I am the resur- 
rection and the life." "Socrates argued for immor- 
tality and believed it, Jesus never stopped to argue, 
but taking it for granted as an immediate and un- 
questionable intuition, lived as though it undoubt- 
edly were true. . . . When one considers therefore 
the character of Jesus, in which faith in God was the 
warp and certainty of life eternal was the woof, he 
Is seeing the consummate verification of faith in 
immortality." 

5. The testimony of the character of God. Ulti- 



82 FACING THE CRISIS 

mately our hope of a life beyond Is grounded in God 
himself. If there is an eternal, infinite and good 
God, if there is a living, loving Father, then the 
future life Is assured. Well may John Fiske say, "I 
believe in the immortality of the soul as the supreme 
act of faith in the reasonableness of God's work." 
Thus our hope in the future life Is grounded in our 
faith in the moral integrity of God. 

6. The testimony of experience. Faith in a future 
life is progressively verified by an expanding spirit- 
ual experience In the present. He that belleveth, 
already ^'hath eternal life." The present life, if it is 
truly spiritual, is eternal. Immortality, rather than 
being a demonstration of logic is a spiritual achieve- 
ment and a present spiritual experience. He who 
knows this inward, moral miracle of a triumphant 
life overcoming temptation, surmounting the limita- 
tions of time and space, the buffetlngs of sorrow and 
separation, has already taken hold on the spiritual 
and eternal. 

Death is but a horizon, the limit of our present 
sight. Goethe held that "death is nature's expert 
device for securing abundance of life." Biologically, 
death was the price paid for a body, for the speciali- 
zation of function and the development of the higher 
life. Mere physical existence could not be finally 
and fully satisfying. It had little significance until 
death lent a new meaning to life as Its great teacher. 
Time took on new value. The limit of man's 
thought was driven out to eternity. Death showed 
the true values of life. 

All fear is excluded from the life that knows this 



IMMORTALITY 83 

faith at the full. Such an experience made simple 
fishermen into world apostles. It made Saul of 
Tarsus into Paul the herald of the Christian civiliza- 
tion of Europe. It made the noble army of martyrs, 
prophets and saints of the centuries. As one young 
officer wrote from Flanders, "Mother, I have seen 
death and death is indescribable, but under the 
shadow of the Almighty I have found a peace 
greater than the terrors of death. '^ One who knows 
Jesus Christ and a living, loving God in a satisfying 
and expanding spiritual experience will have no 
doubts about the future life. Material things may 
pass away — the body, wealth, the pride of the world, 
but a kingdom that cannot be shaken is revealed in a 
spiritual life that transcends death. The caterpillar 
crawls to its chrysalis but the butterfly soars into a 
new life which has the power of perpetuating itself. 
So death becomes but the portal to the life beyond. 

This faith in immortality we base upon the testi- 
mony of science, of religion, of the great seers and 
prophets of the race, of Jesus himself, upon the 
testimony of our faith in the character of God, and 
the witness of an ever growing spiritual experience. 
As Dr. Fosdick says, "The reasonableness of the 
universe is pledged to the immortality of man: the 
beneficence of God is unthinkable without it; the 
verdict of the spiritual seers confirms it; and when it 
is put to the verifying test of life it builds the loftiest 
character." 

If the writer may be pardoned a very personal 
word, this is no question of mere academic interest 
or of creedal orthodoxy, but has proved itself to him 



84 FACING THE CRISIS 

a sustaining experience in facing the crises of his 
own life. The following letter written to a few 
intimate friends at the time of the death of our only- 
son during the war is here added in the hope that 
someone now in the darkness of doubt may find this 
glad and sustaining reality, and know that eternal 
life is not only a future hope but a present expe- 
rience. 

*'March I, 1917. 
'*Dear Friends : 

^'On Saturday night, February 17th, just before 
we reached him at midnight, our dear boy Arden 
passed suddenly and quietly away. He had been 
sick less than a week with a cold which developed 
into a slight case of pneumonia. On Saturday after- 
noon he took a sudden turn for the worse and in a 
few hours, before we could say good-by to him, he 
had entered into life. He leaves a memory of four- 
teen years of unclouded sunshine, rich with happy 
associations and with no regrets. 

"During the week that he was sick he had no pain 
or discomfort and it was not thought that he was 
seriously ill. He had talked with the nurse about 
going as a missionary to India. I remember when I 
took the first walk with him after we had just moved 
to Forest Hills, as we were returning to the house, 
I said: 'Well, Arden, we are almost home.' He 
looked up with a bright smile and said : 'This isn't 
home for me, father; I have no home but India, and 
it will be such a long time before I can finish school 
and college and go back again as a missionary.' 

"He had written to me several times about being 
regular in his morning watch, through the aid of 
Mr. Murray's little book for boys, "Daily Reading 
In the Gospel of Mark." Upon looking at this book 



IMMORTALITY 85 

upon his desk, I found that he had checked each 
lesson as he read it. Each day was marked until I 
came to Saturday at the end of the fifth week, his 
last day of health. He had read and marked the 
passage Mark 5 :35-43, where Jesus had said: 'Fear 
not, only believe. . . . The child is not dead, but 
sleepeth. . . . And taking the child by the hand, he 
said ... I say unto thee, arise.' That was his last 
reading. He too has been raised into new life. 

*T found also on his desk his account book for the 
Opening of the term, kept with no thought of any- 
one ever seeing it. The account showed that he 
had spent for necessities $1.26; for himself, only 
$.41 ; for giving, $10.30 of which most had gone to 
the prisoner-of-war fund. 

"He was a normal, healthy, happy boy, fond of 
sport, a good golfer and tennis player and half-back 
on his little football team. There was no death 
and jio^par ting, just a sudden and peaceful entering 
into the life abundant. During a previous illness, 
when his mother asked him, 'Would you be afraid to 
die, Arden?' he said: *No, mother, why should I 
be?' His whole life was joyous and peaceful, un- 
broken by a single sorrow, and now for us sorrow is 
swallowed up in joy. Our home has never been 
more happy than it is today, nor our family circle i 
more unbroken and united. Earth is not poorer, but i 
heaven is richer and life is fuller. 

"Although I found his last algebra examination 
paper on his table marked perfect, yet he found his 
lessons very hard. He will learn faster now in a 
higher school. There was nothing remarkable or 
precocious about our little boy. He only lived and 
loved, but he was the most affectionate boy I have 
ever known. He was not afraid to kiss me even on 
the street. Just as he was sinking, before I could 
reach him, seeing the doctor and thinking that I had 



86 FACING THE CRISIS 

come, he threw his arms around his neck and said: 
*You love me, father, don't you?', words which he 
had said so often during his life. As I look back on 
the fourteen years, I cannot recall one really wrong 
thing that he ever knowingly did, never a disobe- 
dience nor a lie. He was the purest little soul that I 
have known. The one great lesson that I pray I 
may learn from his life Is that great first and last 
lesson of love. Somehow I think he will help us to 
learn It. I am only filled with thanksgiving for the 
rich gift of this little life. God never takes back a 
gift he gives, he has only taken him to himself till 
we meet in the larger life of perfect love." 



MIRACLES AND THE SUPERNATURAL 

Have miracles ever really occurred? In the light 
of modern science, are they not contrary to the 
uniform laws of nature? Are they not precluded 
by a rational view of the modern world? 

What is the relation between matter and mind, 
between the natural and the supernatural? Is it 
conceivable that God would break into the order 
of nature and interfere with natural processes by a 
miraculous event? 

Is there sufficient evidence for the miracles of 
Christ? 

In facing the crisis in the world of thought today 
we must frankly acknowledge that the modern mind 
has a natural antipathy to miracle. The extension 
of science, with its universality of law, the demand 
of the rational mind for unity, the spirit of the time 
with its over-emphasis upon the material and me- 
chanical and its Inadequate experience of the spirit- 
ual, seem to leave no room for the miraculous.^ 

*Many approach the subject with preconceived prejudice. This 
is sometimes due to a misunderstanding of miracle as in the case 
of Huxley, as "an isolated wonder," or of Hume, who says that 
"a miracle may be accurately described as a transgression of a 
law of nature by a particular violation of the deity." It is thus 
supposed to be contrary to the "unalterable experience of the race," 
and no evidence is sufficient to prove what he misconceives to be 
a breaking of law. The misunderstanding of Hume's definition 
is well answered by Augustine, writing more than twelve centuries 
before him, "How can that be contrary to nature which takes place 
by the will of God, seeing that the will of the Almighty Creator is 
the true nature of every created thing? So that miracle is not 
contrary to nature, but only to what is knoivn of nature." 

87 



88 FACING THE CRISIS 

Recognizing the antipathy to miracles at the pres- 
ent time let us remember that we do not have to 
begin the Christian life with belief in them. There 
is a heart of Christian experience, a central ''core of 
reality/* an inner certainty with which we may begin 
that is not at all dependent upon our opinion con- 
cerning miracles. Let us "fix firm the center first, 
then draw the circle round." If we may conceive 
miracle broadly as the free manifestation of the 
spiritual within the natural order, in ways not ac- 
counted for by the mechanism of that order, then a 
miracle is "not a disorderly occurrence but the mani- 
festation of a higher order." Beginning with the 
central core of Christian experience, are there not 
five widening circles of reality which we may in turn 
accept as we find sufficient evidence for them, all of 
which lead us on from nature to the supernatural? 

There is first of all the miracle of God. We 
must face the alternatives of a spiritual or a mechan- 
ical universe. Once we are sure of God, we can 
confine him to no mechanistic or material world. 
The whole of life Is seen to be in Its widest sense 
spiritual and miraculous. Do the facts of life show 
us a God intelligent, benevolent or "cabined, cribbed, 
confined, bound in"? Is the heart of life a machine, 
or "our Father in Heaven" ? 

Next we come to the great miracle of history, 
Jestis himself. His character, his teaching, his whole 
life In communion with God, his sinless conscious- 
ness, his overwhelming effect upon humanity loom 
large before us. He himself Is the one great moral 



MIRACLES AND THE SUPERNATURAL 89 

miracle. No isolated act, not what he did, but 
what he was and is — this is the heart of miracle. 

Third, we come to the miracle of the resurrection. 
Picture the disciples despairing and scattered, all 
hope dead within them, but suddenly there bursts 
forth the greatest manifestation of life that the 
world has ever seen — life overwhelming and indomi- 
table, life spiritual, moral, intellectual, and creative. 
Belief in the resurrection was universal in the early 
Church.^ It was a fundamental fact four times 
foretold by Jesus himself, and repeated in all the 
records of his life. From this hour there is a new 
creative force in the world. Something happened 
at that time, for Christianity had died with Christ. 
He was crucified in shame, buried in despair, yet 
suddenly an overpowering inward experience pos- 
sessed his disciples. There must have been some 
objective reality corresponding to this new and over- 
whelming subjective experience. Here was the 
greatest Infusion of moral and spiritual life that 
history records upon our planet strangely connected 

* Dr. Sanday says, "The truth is that the historian who tries to 
construct a reasoned picture of the Life of Christ finds that he 
cannot dispense with the miracles. He is confronted with the fact 
that no sooner had the life of Jesus ended in apparent failure and 
shame than the great body of Christians — not an individual here 
and there, but the great mass of the Church — passed over at once 
to the fixed belief that he was God. . . . There must have been 
something about the Life, a broad and substantial element in it, 
which they could recognize as supernatural and divine — not that 
we can recognize, but which they could recognize with the ideas of 
the time. Eliminate miracles from the career of Jesus, and the 
belief of Christians, from the first moment that we have undoubted 
contemporary evidence of it (say A.D. 50) becomes an insoluble 
enigma."— Hastings' "Dictionary of the Bible," Vol. II, p. 627. 
See "Reconstruction in Theology," by President H. C. King, pp. 
66-7. 



90 FACING THE CRISIS 

with a definite event that begins on the third day 
after his crucifixion. What was this power, this un- 
answerable and indubitable experience that sends 
men triumphant Into life and joyfully to death, that 
faces three centuries of persecution by fire and sword 
of the Roman Empire and its legions, that survives 
after nineteen centuries of ancient, medieval and 
modern civilization, and that may be reexperlenced 
and reverlfied today? Was It not the risen Christ 
possessing this new community by an extension of 
the incarnation of the life of God in the souls of 
men? 

But if Christ lives there Is a fourth miracle of 
which we may now make sure, that Is, the inward 
moral miracle of the spiritual life experienced by an 
ever-widening circle of men In all times and climes 
and races. Professor James' "Varieties of Religious 
Experience" Is only one infinitesimal volume of 
an experience that if recorded would extend beyond 
the bounds of all libraries. Christianity and science 
have this in common. Both rest upon a fact, both 
stand upon experience. Religion affirms an experi- 
ence which science cannot deny or disprove. We can 
have within ourselves the last and final proof of the 
resurrection which rests, not on appearances to men 
of a bygone age, but upon an abiding vision for 
men of every age. The writer could add his own 
humble testimony to an abiding experience recorded 
in a previous chapter which he simply cannot under- 
stand or explain upon any basis of a mechanistic 
order, but only upon that of a universe of natural 
and spiritual law miraculous through and through 



MIRACLES AND THE SUPERNATURAL 91 

with divine purpose and activity. Thus with Ter- 
tullian In North Africa, more than a millennium ago, 
men of five continents can summon their own souls 
in testimony as we say with him, "I summon a new 
witness, one more widely known than any book. . . . 
Stand forth in the midst, O Soul, . . . whether 
thou be divine and eternal as most think and there- 
fore the less likely to deceive. . . . Stand forth and 
give thy witness. ... I demand of thee such 
truths as thou bringest with thyself into man which 
thou hast learned either from thyself or the Author 
of thy being." 

As our own experience widens, we may pass to a 
fifth circle of miracle, in Jesus' acts of healing. 
Read through for an hour that first fresh Gospel of 
Mark and note how these works of Jesus are not 
vague wonders, mythological, fantastic exhibitions 
of power, but always manifestations of a loving pur- 
pose with moral meaning. Here he is proclaiming 
the good news of a restored humanity made whole 
in spirit, mind and body. His works simply illus- 
trate, validate and Incarnate his message. Once 
granted that Jesus is the moral miracle of history, 
why should his works seem incredible ? Why should 
not the spirit influence the body? Why should not 
goodness overcome evil; and mind, pure, triumphant 
and God-possessed, dominate sinful, enfeebled and 
victimized humanity? Matter has dominated our 
spirits too long. We have not yet possessed our 
own souls nor our spiritual kingdom.^ 

* Do not the recent discoveries of modern science in the psychical 
realm tend to confirm Jesus' power of healing? If one reads the 



92 FACING THE CRISIS 

It is when we take miracles in their full setting of 
the life of Christ that we may begin to see their 
spiritual significance. Let us remember that it was 
not a miraculous period. John the Baptist had 
wrought no miracles, nor the great prophets before 
Christ. It seems Impossible to reconstruct the New 
Testament if we leave them out. They are Inter- 
woven In the warp and woof of the record. If we 
take up the Gospels, we find they contain sober state- 
ments by matter-of-fact men. They are unequaled 
In the freshness of their Impression. The vivid 
narratives bear the marks of eye-witnesses. As Pro- 
fessor Seeley, In his *'Ecce Homo," says, ^'The fact 
that Christ appeared as a worker of miracles Is the 
best attested fact in his whole biography." Repeat- 
edly, habitually, in vivid and varying detail, his 
works of healing are recorded, but Jesus always sub- 
ordinates them to spiritual purpose and moral con- 
trol. 

Moreover, the miraculous in Jesus Is himself, as 
when Goethe says, "I bow down before him as the 
divine manifestation of the highest principle of 
morality," or, as Tennyson says, ^'What the sun is 
to that sunflower, Jesus Christ is to my soul." From 

chapter by Capt. Hadfield on ''The Psychology of Power," in 
Streeter's "The Spirit," and sees these principles applied to shell- 
shocked patients in our own day, he gains fresh clews to these 
undeniable miracles of Jesus. Prof. A. G. Hogg says, "Man's 
readiness grows; God's readiness is always complete. This ex- 
plains why God's highest responses to the appeal of faith appear 
supernatural. They have been eternally natural to God, but they 
seem miraculous or astonishing to us because our dull faith has 
hitherto excluded them from our experience. God's eternal readi- 
ness breaks in upon us suddenly and in unprecedented manner, 
"whenever our diminishing unreadiness reaches the vanishing 
^oint." 



MIRACLES AND THE SUPERNATURAL 93 

such a person as we have found him to be we would 
expect an unusual knowledge of spiritual laws, an 
unusual power of mind over matter, of the spirit 
over the material. 

Thus we may advance in five widening circles of 
experience — the miracle of God as the only alterna- 
tive to the dead mechanism of an unexplained ma- 
terialistic universe; the mighty miracle of Jesus him- 
self; the fact of his resurrection; the inward moral 
miracle repeated in every disciple who learns the 
spirit of a little child ; and the reasonable and loving 
works of Jesus as he makes men whole. If we 
accept the impression that Jesus made upon the men 
of his day, the weight of evidence of long centuries 
which could not be built upon myth, and the testi- 
mony of our own souls, then miracle with moral 
meaning will be in harmony with our own growing 
spiritual experience. 

We must remember that the so-called "laws of 
nature" are only our subjective generalizations in 
which we try to sum up our limited knowledge of 
things, or the sum total of our systematized experi- 
ence.^ Thus an unusual event, whose cause is to us 
unknown, might be contrary to our ordinary experi- 
ence, but a manifestation of some higher law. This 
is constantly happening with each epoch-making dis- 
covery of science which enlarges the boundaries of 

*The writer is especially indebted in this chapter to Dr. A. C. 
Headlam in his "Miracles of the New Testament," to J. A. Thom- 
son in "The System of Animate Nature," to Frederick Piatt on 
"Miracles," "Basic Ideas in Religion," by Dr. R. W. Micou, "Re- 
construction in Theology," by H. C. King, "Direct and Funda- 
mental Proofs of the Christian Religion," by G. W. Knox, "God 
and the Struggle for Existence," by B. H. Streeter, etc. 



94 FACING THE CRISIS 

our knowledge. Instead of Hume's "unalterable 
experience of the race," if one reads "The Wonder- 
ful Century," by Alfred Russell Wallace, he will see 
how many of the great achievements of science have 
opened up a new world and accomplished things 
which to previous experience seemed miraculous. 
Comte had hardly made his assertion that we would 
never know the chemical composition of the heavenly 
bodies before the discovery of the spectroscope re- 
vealed the elements in the heart of the sun and stars 
more perfectly than we know the hidden portions 
of our own earth. 

If natural law is the simple action of things with 
no human voluntary agency behind them, we might 
define miracle not as a violation of law, but as "the 
ultimate nature of things asserting themselves, a 
revelation of the latent possibilities of things; of 
what they can become by divine activity within 
them." Thus a miracle might be a supernatural, 
fresh activity of the spirit which is its source. It 
might be due to the knowledge of a higher physical 
or spiritual law on the part of some spiritual per- 
sonality.^ 

*In the eighteenth century Bishop Butler, followed by Paley, 
believed miracles to be the "direct and fundamental proofs of the 
Christian religion." At that time miracles were supposed to be 
the evidence that authenticated Christ. Today it is Christ that 
must authenticate miracles. Instead of their being direct proofs, 
we must turn to the self-evidencing, intrinsic truth and worth of 
Christianity and its appeal to our own experience. Only as it 
directly appeals to us as ethics and religion, as it satisfies our 
spiritual need and becomes incarnated in our character and 
embodied in our social activities is it validated. The eighteenth 
century was concerned with the vehicle of the message, while we 
are occupied with its substance. They demanded signs and mira- 
cles; we ask life and experience. 



MIRACLES AND THE SUPERNATURAL 95 

Miracles may be a part of a vast and ordered 
spiritual world which inter-penetrates the natural 
order. Were our experience wide enough to gener- 
alize upon these seemingly unusual events we might 
see that they form a part of a larger order continu- 
ous with the natural. The whole sweep of evolu- 
tion, the inner heart and secret of nature itself 
would seem to point to a larger spiritual order con- 
tinuous with nature, of which man is a part. Sir 
Oliver Lodge shows that there are two conceptions 
of the universe, one spiritual and the other material, 
and we must take our choice.^ 

If we suppose then that God, like man, may cause 
changing combinations of unchanging forces, and 
that nature is not a closed order or a dead machine 
but pliant to spirit and adapted to its use, we thus 
leave room for prayer, for providence, for miracle, 
for a whole spiritual order. 

If science is slow to recognize single miracles, it 
is for the reason that the whole of nature has become 
miraculous. Thus we may find that the supernatural 
would then be not a contradiction to the natural but 
an enlargement of it. Nature would then be law in 
process, and the supernatural the end for which 
law exists. The supernatural would be nature seen 

*"The one, that of a self-contained and self-sufficient universe 
uninfluenced by any life or mind except such as is connected with 
a visible and tangible human body; the other conception that of a 
universe lying open to all manner of spiritual influences perme- 
ated through and through with a divine Spirit . . . with intelli- 
gence and love behind law . . . groping into another super-sensu- 
ous order of existence where there are laws hitherto uniraagined 
by science, but laws as real and as mighty as those by which the 
material universe is governed." Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1912, p. 16, 
Huxley says: "Denying the possibilities of miracles seems to be 
quite as unjustifiable as speculative atheism." 



96 FACING THE CRISIS 

on Its spiritual side, while nature would be the super- 
natural made available and useful for men. Neither 
nature nor the supernatural would be outside the 
sphere of law, but only two sides of one shield of 
reality. Such a spiritual view of life will help us in 
facing the crisis today. 



VI 

THE BIBLE 

1. In facing the crisis in our religious life today 
what is the significance of the Bible, and what is its 
purpose? 

2. Was it immediately dictated by God as some 
perfect, inerrant, infallible, finished book let doix>n 
from heaven, as it were, or is it a record of a pro- 
gressive revelation for the education of an advanc- 
ing race? 

3. How may we realize the practical purpose 
of the Biblef How may we share the deep spiritual 
life of the Psalmists and of the early disciples of 
Jesusf Why should we study the Bible today, and 
how may we receive the greatest help from it? 

What is the purpose of the Bible? The Bible is a 
collected library of sixty-six books, written during 
long periods of time covering more than a thousand 
years of Jewish history. Its various writings are 
grouped in two Testaments or Covenants, the Old 
based upon the Jewish Law of Sinai; the New upon 
the gospel or good news of Jesus Christ. The Bible 
contains a vast literature of prose and poetry, his- 
tory and law, prophecy and wisdom, early cos- 
mogony and embryonic science, folklore and geog- 
raphy, psalms and proverbs. 

The New Testament embraces biography and let- 
ters, history and apocalypse. But the primary object 

of the Bible is none of these. Its unique purpose is 

97 



98 FACING THE CRISIS 

not as literature, though it Is the grandest single 
volume of literature in any language. Its aim is not 
to teach grammar or geography, history or science, 
law or poetry. It is not intended as a storehouse of 
authoritative proof-texts or pious mottoes, not as 
a shibboleth, or a fetish or mystic book to be read 
for merit. It is not an end in itself, to be wor- 
shiped, nor a mechanical, external authority to be 
blindly obeyed. It has one clear purpose. It is a 
means of life; a means, not an end. It shows how 
we may realize the life of God in the soul of men. 
It tells us of a new type of life lived on earth by 
Jesus of Nazareth, how he shared it with his dis- 
ciples, and how we also may possess it. We find here 
a new beginning, a new epoch, a new humanity. 
Growing out of the short life and tragic death of 
Jesus, there had been an overwhelming experience 
of this new life. Men came together to ask what 
had happened. Peter stood up to explain it, and the 
four Gospels and the New Testament are but the 
expansion of the explanation then begun. The Bible 
records the gradual education of the Jewish people 
through inspired prophets, culminating In Jesus 
Christ as their fulfillment. It is thus the record of 
an experience and the vehicle for transmitting it to 
succeeding generations. 

The Bible Is then of priceless value for two rea- 
sons : It Is the outstanding moral and religious book 
of antiquity, containing the record of the world's 
greatest religious race, and It Is our one source of 
knowledge of the historic Jesus. Second, it is the 
one great means of communicating this experience 



THE BIBLE 99 

so that It may be reverified and relived by men in 
each succeeding age. Ours Is not a book religion like 
Islam. It Is a way of life, and centers In a person. 

The Bible Is the most human book In the world, 
yet It Is the most divine. Its authority Is In Its self- 
evidencing power, the appeal of Its Inherent truth, 
its ability to transform life, and to reproduce the 
experience which It records. It has found men be- 
cause, as Emerson says, "It came out of profounder 
depths than any other book." Thus Heine's state- 
ment Is typical of multitudes of men. "I owe my 
enlightenment quite simply to the reading of a book 
. . . the book, the Bible. . . . He who has lost his 
God may find him again In this volume, and he who 
has never known him will there be met bv the breath 
of the divine Word." ^ 

Is the Bible a finished or a progressive revelation 
of God; is it inerrant and infallible? 

Let us recognize that God's object seems to have 
been not to get an Infallible book, but to educate 
men. The Bible nowhere claims to be Infallible. 
Never was man promised a church, or book, or vis- 
ible guide that was to be Inerrant, but God's own 
Spirit was to guide him. Conceivably, there are two 
possible ways that a revelation of God might be 
given. It might be, as It were, let down from 
heaven, In finished, perfected form as an encyclo- 

^ Coleridge says, "In every generation and wherever the light of 
revelation has shown, men of all ranks, conditions and states of 
mind have found in this volume a correspondent for every move- 
ment toward the better it\t in their own heart. The needy soul 
has found supply ; the feeble a help ; the sorrowful a comfort." 



100 FACING THE CRISIS 

pedic revelation of truth — religious, scientific, his- 
torical, philosophical, omniscient. Such a revelation 
would be meaningless to men in the childhood of the 
race. What would they understand of science in 
terms of energy, electrons or ether? Such a perfect 
revelation would be equally incomprehensible to 
them religiously. 

The other alternative would be a gradual, prO" 
gressive revelation as they were able to receive it, 
corresponding to the slow education of the race. 
Which of these two methods God used is not a 
question of theory but of fact. Let us examine and 
see whether in its history, science, morality and 
theology the Bible is infallible, and whether it is 
equally inspired throughout. To be infallible it 
would have to be free from all error and disagree- 
ments; accurate in every statement, recording the 
exact words dictated by God or spoken by Jesus 
Christ; and communicating the perfect thought and 
will of God. Does the Bible do this, or does it 
disclose a developing conception of truth, the slow 
dawning of light in the midst of the darkness and 
ignorance and sin of man? 

In the imprecatory Psalms, the Psalmist prays for 
vengeance upon his enemies. "When he shall be 
judged, let him come forth guilty; and let his prayer 
be turned into sin. Let his children be fatherless, 
and his wife a widow. Let his children be contin- 
ually vagabonds, and beg. . . . Let there be none 
to extend mercy unto him ; neither let there be any to 
have pity on his fatherless children. . . . Let the 
iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the 



THE BIBLE 101 

Lord; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted 
out." ^ But Jesus prays, 'Tather, forgive them, for 
they know not what they do." Which is the higher 
of these conceptions? Are they equally inspired? 
If so, why is the Bible of the most devout much used 
and worn thin on these passages of Jesus, and the 
pages white and almost untouched in the impreca- 
tory Psalms and parts of the Old Testament? Did 
the enemy in the war ever go beyond the cruelty of 
some of the imprecatory Psalms? Are they equally 
inspired with the twenty-third Psalm, and the Ser- 
mon on the Mount? Are they morally infallible; 
if so, why do we not follow them today? 

Do we discern no moral progress in the Bible? 
Abraham and Solomon had their many wives and 
concubines; but if the Apostle Paul had done so, 
could he be a spiritual authority for us? David 
commits adultery and is responsible for the murder 
of Uriah. Would Peter have done so? Jehu^s 
massacre of the descendants of Ahab Is approved by 
the writer of the Kings as *'zeal for the Lord." But 
later it is condemned by Hosea, as a sin for which 
the Lord' will destroy the house of Israel.^ Is there 
contradiction here or progress? 

We must remember that Jesus Christ is the touch- 
stone and test of the whole. By his standard all 
parts of the Bible must be judged. Jesus himself 
criticizes the Old Testament and is our authority 
for judging its moral teaching in the light of his own. 
Thus, to Moses were ascribed certain laws concern- 

* Psalm 109:9-15. 

"II Kings 10:30; Hosea 1:4. 



102 FACING THE CRISIS 

ing divorce; but Jesus says, they are *'on account of 
the hardness of your hearts," that is, the low moral 
standard of the time. 

Many claim that the Bible is inerrant and perfect 
in its science, its history, and its very words. A 
controversialist in India, who believed in infallible, 
verbal inspiration, came to the writer and asked, 
"Some people say there are more than two thousand 
mistakes in the Bible; is that true?" We asked 
him, "What was the inscription written on the cross 
of Christ?" He replied, " This is the King of the 
Jews.' " We said, *'A paraphrase will not do; give 
us the very words." "Well," he answered, "look in 
the Bible." We replied, "Supposing we do, will we 
find there the exact words that were on the cross, 
infallibly recorded?" "Yes," he said, "absolutely 
the exact words." "Well," we said, "to which Gos- 
pel shall we turn, since it is given in four different 
ways in the four Gospels, and no two of them 
exactly agree? Which one shall we take as the one 
that is infallible and verbally inspired? If no two 
of them precisely agree, is this a mistake or not?" 
He thought for a moment and replied, "No, it is 
not a mistake, they agree in substance ; they give the 
essential truth ; the words do not matter." Was he 
not right? "The letter killeth; the Spirit giveth 
life." It is the substance that matters. If you can- 
not find a single parable or miracle or a single say- 
ing of Christ of three lines in extent, that is recorded 
in exactly the same words in the four Gospels, in any 
three Gospels, or in any two Gospels; if no two 
exactly agree, which account shall we take as verbally 



THE BIBLE 103 

inspired and infallible f It is when we come to the 
Bible to fulfill its great divine purpose that we find 
it a means of life, the record of God's revelation to 
man that leads us to the very heart of God. 

There will be found over a hundred thousand 
variations in the readings of the oldest and best 
manuscripts of the New Testament. Nowhere does 
the Bible make the claim of infallibility nor was this 
claim ever made for it until the fourth century. 
Luther and many other equally devout and intelli- 
gent men never held this view of inerrancy. Some 
may say, ''The New Testament at least is infal- 
lible." But to take one of many instances, turn to 
Matthew 27 -.9, where the writer says, "Then the 
word spoken by the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled." 
We find, however, that the writer, quoting from 
memory, does not give the passage accurately, as is 
the case of many of the quotations from the Old 
Testament.^ In fact, the passage is not found at all 
in Jeremiah, but in Zechariah 11 113. Some would 
say, "You must believe all, or reject all." Would 
you reject the priceless teaching of Jesus because 
Matthew or some other writer, quoting from mem- 
ory, gives the wrong name of a book? 

Take the analogy of our human parents. As 
children, we believed them to be infallible; we be- 
lieved in Santa Claus and fairies, but we were later 
disillusioned. We do not need infallible but loving 
human parents; nor an inerrant, inhuman, mechani- 

*See Charles R. Brown, "The Main Points," p. 77. "Criticism 
has demolished alike the Catholic assumption of an infallible 
Church and the Protestant assumption of an infallible Book." 
Gwatkin, "The Knowledge of God," Vol. II, p. 289. 



104 FACING THE CRISIS 

cal book let down from heaven, but a means of life. 

We must also distinguish between the eternal 
truth contained in the Bible and the tradition about 
it which men have held from time to time. For 
illustration, the writer stood some years ago on the 
battlefield of Waterloo. At a certain strategic point 
on the right of Wellington's line there was a stone 
wall held throughout the day of the battle. There 
was a hedge fence in advance of this stone wall that 
might have been defended during the early morning 
hours of the battle ; but upon inquiry we found that 
Wellington never attempted to hold this doubtful 
line. He could not there have withstood the full 
force of the enemy. His forces might have been 
unable to regain and hold even the stone wall in the 
haste and rout of retreat. Now, the stone wall 
represents the truth of the Bible, and the hedge fence 
the tradition men have held about It, or various 
theories of'its origin, authorship, inspiration, infalli- 
bility, or inerrancy. For ourselves, we must hold to 
the stone wall of truth, and not endeavor to defend 
the lines of tradition or theory that men have held 
about the Bible. 

We must not forget that almost every evil has in 
turn been justified by proof texts from the Bible, 
whether of witch-craft, slavery, the inquisition, or 
other evils and superstitions. And it is equally true 
that almost every radical advance in science has been 
opposed by those who held traditional theories about 
the Bible. Perhaps this was natural and almost in- 
evitable, but had the Church stood from first to last 
for truth, for scientific observation, and sound his- 



THE BIBLE 105 

torlcal criticism, for social justice and human right, 
it would not find itself in the situation it does today 
throughout the world. 

It may be said, that even if some of these things 
are undeniably true it is unwise to teach them. But 
we are facing the crisis in the world today. Students 
of modern science and philosophy, the men returned 
from the war, even the man in the street who has 
caught the spirit of the times can no longer receive 
upon mere outward authority views which cannot 
bear the test of thorough investigation. Many have 
already drifted away from organized religion. If 
men are not ready to be told the truth today, when 
will they be? What kind of a faith is it that cannot 
bear the light of the full glare of day, or cannot face 
the indisputable facts of science? We believe that 
just because we have failed to teach the truth, the 
whole truth as far as we know it, and nothing but 
the truth, that incalculable damage has already been 
done, and that many a man has lost his faith alto- 
gether and abandoned in retreat the stone wall of 
truth, who would today be a true Christian if a 
rational view of the Bible had been presented to 
him in full harmony with modern science. Surely 
we need not be afraid nor try to steady the ark of 
truth. Are we to repeat the mistakes of the last 
three hundred years and continue this opposition to 
the results of modern science? 

The Bible remains the unique possession of the 
human race. It is a divinely inspired, human record 
of the progressive revelation of God's perfect truth 
to imperfect, developing men. Its inspiration is 



106 FACING THE CRISIS 

vital, not mechanical. It is the most honest, ingen- 
uous, frank, self-evidencing book in the world. It 
establishes its own authority. It is a very fountain 
of living waters, a means of life, a channel of the 
most priceless experience in human history. 

How may we realize the practical purpose of the 
Bible, and why should we study itf 

The three great spiritual needs of the individual 
would seem to be, to come into vital fellowship with 
God, to enter into helpful relation to his fellowmen 
in service, and to form a Christian character in over- 
coming temptation. These three needs the Bible 
supplies as no other book or all others combined. 
How does it do this? 

We need to read the Bible for the same reason 
that we need physical food. M. Bergson, in his 
"Creative Evolution,*' shows that we need food for 
the body for three reasons, to repair waste, to fur- 
nish heat for the system, and to supply energy or 
explosive power for work. For the same three 
corresponding spiritual reasons, we need to study 
the Scriptures. Herbert Spencer says, "Whatever 
amount of power an organism expends is the equiva- 
lent of the power that was taken into it from with- 
out.'' We cannot give out what we do not receive. 
Life is a correspondence of receiving and giving. 
Inflow and overflow. Prayer, and the study of the 
Bible, are perhaps the two chief means of inflow to 
the spiritual life. 

When a King of England Is crowned, he Is pre- 
sented with the Bible In the coronation service with 



THE BIBLE 107 

these words, "We present you with this Book, the 
greatest thing this world affords. There is truth; 
this is wisdom: these are the living oracles of God." 
We too are presented with this priceless possession 
of the race. Shall we eagerly study it or neglect it? 
Look down the centuries at men of spiritual power. 
As they have been men of prayer, so have they been 
men who lived upon the truth of God's Word — men 
like Bunyan, Luther, and Wesley. Hear Samuel 
Rutherford in Scotland say, "A river of God's un- 
seen joys has flowed from bank to brae over my 
soul. I urge upon you communion with Christ, a 
growing communion. . . . Therefore dig deep, and 
sweat, and labor, and take pains for him. Set by as 
much time in the day for him as you can. He will 
he won with labor J^ Listen to McCheyne, 'T ought 
to spend the first hours of every day in communion 
with God. It is my noblest and most fruitful em- 
ployment, and is not to be thrust into any corner." 
Hear George Miiller, writing at the age of ninety- 
two, answering a question as to the secret of his 
spiritual power, "I have been a lover of God's 
Word." 1 

^W^oodrow Wilson says, "I am sorry for the men who do not 
read the Bible every day. I wonder why they deprive themselves 
of the strength and pleasure. I should be afraid to go forward if I 
did not believe there lay at the foundation of all our schooling and 
all our thought this incomparable and unimpeachable Word of 
God." Dr. R. F. Horton says, "No difficulties in the Bible are 
worth considering compared with the difficulties of those who cease 
to read it. Out of their lives has gone not only a great intellectual 
discipline, a touchstone of literary taste, a handbook of ethics and 
conduct, but the master instrument for holding the soul in com- 
munion Vvfith God. Read the Book. Consider that here you have 
the greatest book in the world, the fountain head of modern litera- 
ture; remember the past, the souls that have been fed and 



108 FACING THE CRISIS 

Jesus himself "lived and had his being In the 
sacred Scriptures." If you look through the Gospel 
of Matthew, you will find that he quotes fifty-eight 
times from seventeen different books In the Old 
Testament; some fifteen times from Isaiah, eleven 
from the Psalms, ten from Deuteronomy, six from 
Jeremiah, etc. These were the springs from which 
he drank. Tischendorf tells of his discovery of the 
great manuscript In the monastery at the foot of 
Mount Sinai, when his hand shook with excitement 
at the priceless possession, worth millions, the value 
of which was unrecognized by the simple monks. Is 
it not true that the supreme value of this Book Is 
often equally unrecognized by the modern student 
today? In a life filled with feverish activity, how 
little time we have for God. We say we have no 
time; no time for what? No time for God, no time 
for power, no time for character? Are there not 
twelve hours in the day, and are we not here In 
touch with one of the sources and secrets of the very 
Life that changed human history? 

How then shall we study this book? If we are 
beginners supposing we start with the Sermon on 
the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and 7. Let us study It 
paragraph by paragraph. Let us ask at each verse 
or section, first, what does It mean, and second, 
what does It teach me today about life? First we 
must get Its truth Into the outer court of the mind, 
but second, into the inner court of the heart, that it 
may change our lives. Let us study it regularly, 

strengthened on this spiritual food, the deeds that have been 
done, the lives that have, been led by its inspiration." "My Be- 
lief," p. 132. 



THE BIBLE 109 

rationally, systematically, practically, prayerfully. 
Let us study it at least as thoroughly as we would 
any other book. This Is the surest method in facing 
the crisis in the present time of transition in the 
world of thought. 

Can the student not set apart at least a few min- 
utes for this purpose at such time as he may find best 
and most profitable ? For most of us that will prob- 
ably be the first and the freshest time in the early 
morning. Just as the soldier puts on his armor 
before the battle rather than after, as the musician 
tunes his instrument before the concert begins rather 
than after it is over, so we need strength and har- 
mony for each new day before It is lived. Let us 
also heed the word of Hudson Taylor, who had led 
a thousand missionaries into the heart of China, 
when he said to the students of America, "Make the 
devotional study of the Word of God the first thing 
in your life, absolutely." 



VII 

EVOLUTION 

In facing the crisis today can we reconcile the 
apparently conflicting claims of religion and mod- 
ern science? Is the first chapter of Genesis in har- 
mony with the theory of evolution? 

There can be no conflict between true religion and 
true science, if they are parts of one common reality. 
The only clash can be between an unbelieving science 
and an unscientific belief. There may be a conflict 
between our imperfect developing conceptions of 
science and theology, but true science and true 
religion as such can have no conflict. For illustra- 
tion, here are two railway trains approaching at top 
speed, apparently doomed to collision and the total 
wreck of both. But they pass by unharmed, for they 
are on parallel tracks. This Is true of the parallel 
planes of science and religion. Supposing we under- 
stand evolution as simply the gradual method of de- 
velopment observable in all spheres of nature and 
human experience and that it is only the way of 
God's working. How then would it Impair our faith 
to believe that God normally works by evolution 
rather than by revolution, that he works rationally, 
slowly and surely, rather than suddenly and arbi- 
trarily? Instead of losing would not religion im- 
mensely gain from this conception? 

110 



EVOLUTION ail 

Evolution implies descent with modification, that 
all life has been evolved from certain primordial 
germs. ^ In other words, It Is simply the develop- 
ment from simple to complex forms of life by adap- 
tation. Such a theory of development Is In no way 
necessarily materialistic, automatic or self-sufficient. 
If any adequate explanation is to be given of this 
wonderful plan of development observable through- 
out the universe It requires God not only for its 
origin but also in the whole process from start to 
finish. 

Let us beware at the outset of prejudice. Let us 
frankly admit that almost every radical advance in 
science involving a change from traditional theolo^- 
cal views has been opposed In the supposed interests 
of rehgion.^ Augustine, the great writer of the 
fourth century, held that if we assert that men live 
on the other side of the earth we would give the lie 
to the Holy Spirit and to the scriptures which give 
no such view of a round world. Columbus was 

^LeConte in his "Evolution and Its Relation to Religious 
Thought" describes it as "continuous progressive change according 
to certain laws and bv means of resident forces." Schiller in his 
"Riddles of the Sphynx" defines evolution as "the universal law 
of the becoming of things ; a progressive development of the indi- 
vidual in combination with other individuals in which the individ- 
ual passes from the atom to the moral person." 

* Buckle in his "History of Civilization," writes: "Every new truth 
which has ever been propounded has, for a time, caused mischief; 
it has produced discomfort and often unhappiness, sometimes by 
disturbing social and religious arrangements, and sometimes 
merely by the disruption of old and cherished associations of 
thoughts. ... At length the truth causes nothing but good. . . . 
Men are made uneasy; they flinch; they cannot bear the sudden 
light . . . old interests and old beliefs have been destroyed before 
new ones have been created. . . . These symptoms . . . have pre- 
ceded all great changes through which the world has passed." In 
facing the crisis of the present time, is not the same process being 
repeated ? 



112 FACING THE CRISIS 

vigorously opposed by the church leaders of his day 
who refuted his theories from scripture, which im- 
plied a flat earth and the four corners thereof. 
When Magellan's fleet circumnavigated the globe 
the discovery that the world was round was fiercely 
opposed in the interests of orthodoxy. Galileo was 
forced by the church to recant upon his knees and 
renounce his dangerous doctrine, but the earth 
moved just the same and a mistaken medieval theol- 
ogy could not change it. When Copernicus discov- 
ered in 1543 that the sun was the center of our 
system it was in contradiction to the whole cosmic 
theological system of the day, and Calvin and Luther 
vigorously opposed his discovery.^ John Wesley In 
the eighteenth century in the controversy over the 
burning of witches maintained that if witchcraft 
were not true the whole Bible fell to the ground. 
The publication of the "Origin of the Species" by 
Darwin In 1859 brought forth a new array of de- 
fenders of the faith to attack the discoveries of 
modern science, just as fresh discoveries had been 
opposed for fifteen centuries before that time In the 
face of every radical advance of thought. President 
Andrew D. White, in his '^Warfare of Science and 
Religion," shows that 'interference with science In 
the supposed interests of religion has resulted in the 

^Luther said: "People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who 
strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the 
firmament, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear 
clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is, of 
course, the very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science 
of astronomy, but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded 
the sun to stand still, and not the earth." How similar was the 
great Luther's well meaning but futile attack to those who oppose 
evolution today on scriptural grounds. 



EVOLUTION 113 

direst evils, and untrammeled investigation in the 
highest good of religion and science. . . . God's 
truth must agree whether discovered in the soul or 
within the world. . . . They must at last come to- 
gether, for truth is one." 

There are a number of earnest Christians today 
who look askance at the doctrine of evolution as 
calculated to overthrow faith. We are forced, how- 
ever, in facing the crisis in the world of thought 
today, to take our choice between the modern view 
of the world on the one hand, and the ancient or 
medieval view on the other. Many Christians still 
retain the old world view in whole or in part. Ac- 
cording to this earlier view the earth was the center 
of a comfortable little universe. The sun revolved 
around the earth and the "firmament" was a solid 
dome from which the stars were hung. The earth 
was flat with its "four corners"; heaven was just 
above and hell below us. The elect had the direc- 
tion of a verbally inspired inerrant seat of authority 
and for outsiders there was the "proof" of Natural 
Religion in the argument from design, based on the 
scientific doctrine of the day of the fixity of species, 
as special creations in a world made in six days, and 
ruled by absolute divine decrees. 

But this old world view was shattered for students 
of modern science.^ First came astronomy which 
showed our little earth as one of the least of the 
planets, revolving around our sun as one of the 
smallest of the stars in a boundless universe. Then 
geology and the kindred sciences pushed back the 

' See Bishop Gore's "Belief in God," pp. 6-28. 



ii4j facing the crisis 

six days of creation to a record of more than six 
hundred million years of evolving life upon our 
planet. Biology then traced the development of 
man as part of a vast evolution of life from simple 
to complex forms. Next Historical Criticism sub- 
jected the Bible to the same scientific scrutiny as all 
other books and showed its progressive historical 
development, comparing with it similar stories of 
creation, the flood, etc., found among the nations 
surrounding the Hebrews. Then the study of Com- 
parative Religions discovered vast ranges of parallel 
truth in other faiths of mankind and the question 
was asked if this truth was all "from the devil." 
Next came the rise of democracy and "the revolt of 
the modern conscience" against supposedly divine 
decrees condemning to eternal punishment multi- 
tudes of men even before their birth, together with 
the great bulk of mankind who had never had the 
opportunity of hearing the Christian message. 
Finally the World War broke down many of the old 
traditions and beliefs and forced men who dared to 
do so to rethink their position. 

A Christian today must take his choice between 
the medieval and the modern view of the world. 
Fortunately his personal religious experience can be 
real and deep whether his view of science be medi- 
eval or modern, but it is indeed a privilege to have a 
joyous vital Christian experience coupled with a 
rational faith in harmony with science, for one who 
must live his life in the full current of the modern 
world. A recent pronouncement of Dr. Dowie's 



EVOLUTION 115 

followers ^ indicates how one may retain the medi- 
eval view today and suggests the probability that 
many of us have some of the grave clothes of the 
old view still clinging to us in the present. We 
should have very real sympathy for those whose 
view of truth seems threatened if it is changed in a 
single detail. It is not easy to make the transition 
from the old to the modern view, and there may be 
a dark valley of doubt between, but the high sunlit 
tableland of truth lies beyond and the solid Rock of 
Ages will be beneath your feet. 

The writer recalls many during the last year who 
were in the throes of the dark transition. Upon 
whichever side of the great divide we may be, let us 
at least endeavor to understand one another and 
speak the truth in a love that is "never glad when 
others go wrong . . . always eager to believe the 
best, always hopeful, always patient." Let us not 
call one another "atheists," "agnostics" or "infidels" 
because we differ in some point, however important 
it may be. 

If I may speak for myself, thirty-three years ago 

^Wilbur Voliva, overseer of Zion and head of the Christian 
Apostolic Church, has completed the fixing of the dimensions of 
the flat world, the existence of which is now taught in the Zion 
schools. The sky is a vast dome of solid material from which 
the sun, moon and stars are hung like chandeliers from a ceiling. 
The edges of the dome, he explained to the congregation at Shiloh 
Tabernacle, rest on the wall which surrounds the flat world. "That 
is the plain teaching of the whole word of God," Mr. Voliva said. 
"The firmament above our heads is a solid structure and the 
stars are points of light, that is all. They are not worlds, they 
are not suns. So-called science is a lot ofsilly rot, and so is so- 
called medical science and all the rest of their sla-called sciences. 
The sun is a small body about forty miles in diameter and located 
only 3,000 miles from the earth," that is, about as far as New 
York is from San Francisco. — Zion, Illinois, Feb. i, 1922. 



116 FACING THE CRISIS 

I began to make this transition to the modern view- 
point. All the deepest spiritual experiences of my 
life have come to me in connection with this view. 
It is not some new departure. It has been the 
foundation for all my missionary life and evangelistic 
work. For myself I have found the gladness of a 
rational and joyous faith, a loving God and Father 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, a divine and risen Saviour, 
an inspired Word of God, a spiritual experience 
that has quenched the thirst of my soul these many 
years, and a message of evangelism that is really 
saving men in the Orient and Occident alike. 

While scientists differ as to the theory which will 
best account for the facts, and may reject in part the 
particular views of Darwin, Herbert Spencer and 
others, evolution as a principle is now accepted in 
practically all departments of knowledge. We see 
the process of development actually going on today 
all about us and new forms both of plants and 
animals are being produced before our eyes; by 
Burbank and others in plants and flowers, and by 
the followers of DeVries in the animal kingdom.^ 

To anyone who will examine the case for evolu- 
tion impartially, it seems convincing and unanswer- 
able. If we take the converging lines of evidence 
from comparative anatomy, from embryology, 
where the unborn infant in its earlier stages recapitu- 
lates lower forms, the evidence from paleontology in 

^As Prof. James Harvey Robinson points out, **The most stal- 
wart and eloquent opponent of evolution was, a few decades ago, 
a single cell less than one hundredth of an inch in diameter. . . . 
Each of us has actually recapitulated the history of life in a 
marvelous series of personal metamorphoses." 



EVOLUTION 117 

the age-long record of the rocks, the evidence from 
geographical distribution, and finally from experi- 
mental investigation, the chain of evidence seems 
convincing. 

Take for instance the development of the horse. 
In the museum of Natural History in New York, at 
Yale, and elsewhere, you will note that it begins with 
a little animal eleven Inches in height, smaller than 
a sheep, with Rve long toes, fitted for running In the 
deep marsh grass. As the dry land and short grass 
emerge the horse becomes adapted to the changing 
environment. One by one the toes disappear until 
we have left the fleet hoof as the nail of one toe and 
the large swift horse of today. Again, if you take 
the embryo of the shark, the chicken and the man, 
at an early stage of development long before birth, 
all have gills for breathing under water, a long tail 
and the system of the circulation of the blood pecul- 
iar to the fish. Finally these disappear In the 
human embryo and the new and higher life evolves 
adapted to the present environment of each. The 
one hundred or more vestigial structures like the 
human appendix which were once functional, per- 
forming a needed service In a lower form of life but 
which are now left as rudimentary, give further 
evidence. 

The gains to all departments of life made by this 
great discovery are almost Incalculable. It has 
brought Increased emphasis on the Immanence of 
God. God Is not some far-off deistic maker of a 
self-running machine, nor is he merely appearing 
and reappearing In certain gaps of special manifes- 



118 FACING THE CRISIS 

tatlons, but immanent in the whole process from 
beginning to end. Evolution has also given us a 
larger view of the method, plan and aim of God. It 
has revealed a greater universe and a greater God 
than our fathers ever conceived. Every atom of 
matter is a miraculous microcosm of whirling elec- 
trons. From the infinitesimal to the infinite all is 
part of one marvelous plan. Moreover, it gives us 
a wider unity and sweep to all life and a deeper 
harmony between the natural and the spiritual. 

"A sacred kinship I would not forego 
Binds me to all that breathes." 

This progressive view also leads us to a larger 
spiritual hope and greater patience as we see that 
all progress is gradual, not cataclysmic by sudden, 
arbitrary jerks and starts. The present roots in the 
past, and the future in the present as we share "the 
power of an endless life." 

How then can we reconcile the first chapter of 
Genesis with modern science and evolution? We 
simply do not try to reconcile them. A moment's 
thought will convince us that there were, as we have 
seen, two possible methods open if there was to be a 
divine revelation to man. One would be a perfect, 
final, infallible compendium of universal knowledge 
let down from heaven in a finished and perfect book. 
But supposing such a book were written in terms of 
modern science, about electrons, relativity, radium, 
the nebular hypothesis, etc. Of what possible moral 
and spiritual use would it have been to men during 
the last five thousand years or in any other age? It 



EVOLUTION 119 

would have been incomprehensible and impractical. 
Even if it were written in terms of modern twentieth 
century science it would be out of date in a few 
years. 

If on the other hand man must learn by gradual 
progress in education and discipline, the only other 
alternative to the above would seem to be that of a 
gradual, progressive revelation on the principle "I 
have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear 
them now." If we turn to the first chapter of the 
Bible we read: *'In the beginning — God"! More 
than thirty times in this chapter God is referred to 
as the author of all. Here is the divinely inspired 
spiritual truth that it is God's world and that in it 
he has a purpose of good. Then we read on through 
that opening poem containing a beautiful picture of 
a world described as created in six days each with 
its evening and morning. As we contrast this state- 
ment with those of certain other sacred books de- 
scribing the world as hatched out of a golden egg, 
in seven round continents and seven concentric seas 
of milk, melted butter, etc., we see the simple gran- 
deur of the Biblical narrative. But in no sense is it 
scientific and by no conceivable stretch of the imagi- 
nation can it truly be made so. The Bible is a mar- 
velous book of poetry, prose, history, geography, 
cosmogony and a hundred other things, but for none 
of these things was it written. Its one central pur- 
pose was that believing, we might have life; to so 
reveal God to man in a revelation culminating in 
Jesus Christ, that we might have life in him. To 
force it to do duty as science, history, geography, 



120 FACING THE CRISIS 

astronomy, geology, etc., is to repeat the catastrophe 
of those who have opposed science by scripture from 
the days of Augustine to the present. 

As a matter of fact, is it not perfectly plain to the 
unprejudiced reader that evolution, or a gradual, 
progressive revelation, is the very method of scrip- 
ture itself? Note the progress from the early local 
conception of a God who walks in the garden in the 
cool of the day and who shows his "hinder parts'' to 
Moses, who dwells in a sacred place called the ark, 
or in this mountain or that holy place, to the uni- 
versal conception of Jesus that God is to be wor- 
shiped neither in this mountain nor yet in Jerusalem, 
"when the real worshipers will worship the Father 
in spirit and in reality.'' Is there not manifest evo- 
lution or development of thought in this higher 
conception of God? Is there no development from 
foods clean and unclean which might not be eaten, 
to the teaching of Jesus that nothing from without 
defiles the man? Is there no progress from the 
atrocities of slaying their prisoners the Amalekites 
and the awful unforgiveness of the imprecatory 
psalms to the teaching of Jesus that God is love, and 
that we are to love our enemies and do them good? 
Is there no moral progress from the primitive polyg- 
amy, slavery, divorce and crude immorality prac- 
ticed in the early scriptures to the standard of Jesus, 
"Ye therefore shall be perfect even as your heavenly 
Father is perfect? ^ 

Let us therefore gladly receive the revelation of 
God's truth equally in his word and in his world, in 
* See Matt 5:31-33 and 43-48. 



EVOLUTION 121 

religion and in science. We shall find one vast, 
mighty, majestic process culminating in the cross and 
resurrection of Jesus Christ and in the Kingdom of 
God as a new social order. Thus through all the 
ages one increasing purpose runs, and love is found, 
creation's final law. Thus like the author of the 
Hebrews, "receiving a kingdom that cannot be 
shaken,'' ^ we accept God's truth through the grad- 
ual, developing, evolutionary revelation of himself 
in religion and science alike. 

^Hebrews 12:27, 28. 



VIII 

DIFFICULTIES CONCERNING PRAYER 

There seem to be three main difficulties with 
regard to prayer — the scientific, the philosophic, and 
the practical. These are expressed in the following 
questions : 

1. Has answered prayer any reality in a world 
governed by universal lawf Could God, or would 
God, interfere with the fixed lams of nature in 
order to answer prayerf 

2. // God is good, will he not give what is best 
for us without our asking? Can we assume that 
God does not know our needs and must be told 
them, or that knowing them he will not supply 
them unless asked f 

3. Has prayer any objective reality? Is there 
anyone who really hears and cares and answers? 
Does anything really happen outside ourselves 
when we pray? 

I. Does not natural law preclude prayerf 
Let us note that law is not some independent 
entity or force or self-directing power. It is neither 
mind, matter nor energy. Law is only the way of 
working of some reality, or else our own observa- 
tion of the way things seem to work. But things 
do not work themselves. We observe a rationality 
and regularity in the universe. It is but the way of 
God's working; as the poet tells us, *'Law is but a 

name for an effect whose cause is God." 

122 



DIFFICULTIES CONCERNING PRAYER 123 

Natural law no more prevents prayer than It 
prevents friendship; rather, it furthers both. The 
world apparently was made for persons and their 
development. If so, it was made for prayer. The 
regularity of law and reliability of nature, rather 
than interfering with prayer, enable us to pray with 
confidence and to cooperate with God for the answer- 
ing of our prayers. 

For illustration, here is a vast electric railway 
system, with a power plant costing millions, and an 
extended service for multitudes. Is it conceivable 
that the car of this great plant will stop for a little 
boy and his coin, or will take notice of a single pas- 
senger? Yes, because the system itself was planned 
so that this very boy, the individual passenger, and 
the whole community might use it. The plant was 
made for the passenger, not the passenger for the 
plant. If it is God's world and was made for man, 
prayer is one of the prearranged laws of the uni- 
verse. 

We are increasingly finding how we can use the 
laws of nature and how they can be adapted to man's 
needs. When the writer was crossing the ocean 
recently, a thousand miles out at sea we could hear 
by the ship's wireless apparatus a conversation car- 
ried on between London and Geneva concerning the 
League of Nations. Recently when Alexander Gra- 
ham Bell in Washington was conversing by wireless 
telephone with the Eiffel Tower in Paris, he was 
interrupted by a man from Honolulu, in mid-Pacific, 
joining in the conversation. If man can thus increas- 



lU FACING THE CRISIS 

ingly utilize natural laws and forces, why cannot 
God also, if it is his world? 

To answer prayer, God does not have to interfere 
or to suspend law or break into his world from 
without. He is here already, immanent in mind and 
matter, in every force which is the expression of his 
will, in every law which is but the observed and 
reliable habit of his working. The scientific man no 
longer sets bounds to the possible, and we cannot 
limit what God can do, save in the realm of the 
morally impossible. Law, which is another name for 
God's faithfulness, enables us to pray and God to 
answer. 

2. // God is goody will he not give what is best 
for us without our asking? 

Our conception of prayer will be determined by 
our conception of God. If God, as we have found 
reason to believe, is a loving, intelligent Will; if he 
is such a God as Jesus affirmed, then the life of 
Jesus is a revelation both of man's sonship and of 
God's Fatherhood, of the necessity and nature of 
prayer, and of the bond between God and man. 

You say, "Why should we ask In prayer? Will 
not a good God automatically give what is good?" 
Our answer is that we pray for the following rea- 
sons: 

Prayer is the inevitable necessity of the dependent 
life. We are not automatic machines, nor Is God a 
mechanical providence, but a loving Father. All 
life is social, horizontally in fellowship with men, 
vertically in fellowship with God. Life Is but the 
sum total of our personal relationships. The laws 



DIFFICULTIES CONCERNING PRAYER 125 

in the two realms, human and divine, are similar. 
The environment of the soul is God, and our corre- 
spondence with him is prayer. As the lungs are 
constructed for breathing, our spiritual life is made 
for fellowship. We pray because it Is the law of 
our life, the nature of our being. 

Asking and receiving is a law of life, human and 
divine. Jesus challenged man to pray, "Ask, seek, 
knock." In life, broadly speaking, it is the one who 
asks who receives; it is the seeker who finds; it is 
the man who knocks who is admitted. Here is a 
general law of life, though modified by certain con- 
ditions, such as asking according to God's will. We 
are always occupied by the limitations of prayer. 
Jesus was concerned with its possibilities. Broadly 
speaking, prayer has an answer. Man usually gets 
what he seeks, if he seeks truly, teachably, and per- 
sistently, whether of man or of God. 

God does not, because he cannot, give automati- 
cally what is good, for my good depends on my 
spiritual state. What is good for me, if I am pre- 
pared by prayer and able profitably to receive it, 
may be other and better than what would be good 
for me if unprepared and unreceptive. Unasked 
blessing, like unearned wealth, may be unappreciated 
and even harmful. The object of prayer is not so 
much to get things, but to get God himself, not to 
possess but to become, to be such persons that we 
may share God's life. Thus God cannot give for- 
giveness or purity of heart to a man who does not 
desire or ask for them. A forced or arbitrary gift 
would often be not a blessing but a curse. We need 



126 FACING THE CRISIS 

such divine help as shall enable us to achieve for 
ourselves in moral freedom. What would be im- 
possible in an isolated independent life is made pos- 
sible by dependent fellowship in prayer. Thus the 
fundamental law of prayer remains, "Ask and ye 
shall receive." "Ye have not because ye ask not." 

Prayer is the language of the spiritual family, of 
children to their Father, the normal and necessary 
means of communication and of fellowship. Ac- 
cording to the teaching of Jesus, we may follow the 
analogy of the family in learning our true relation to 
God. There are some things that a wise parent does 
not give a child whether it asks for them or not, 
such as poison or a sharp knife, or a weapon. There 
are some things which the parent gives without wait- 
ing to be asked, such as daily food. But there are 
some things which we only get when we ask; for our 
asking furnishes the condition of our receiving. 
The need voiced in a request shows our apprecia- 
tion; it prepares us to receive the thing which we 
now consciously desire. Thus, when the child is old 
enough to appreciate and ask for higher education, 
for some further opportunity for self-development 
or service, the very asking prepares and enables the 
parent to give and the child to receive. In like 
manner, there are some harmful things God will 
not give whether we pray or not, other necessary 
things he gives without our asking, but there are 
still others which only prayer makes it possible for 
us to receive. 

The object of prayer is not to get what we want, 
but what God wants, not to change God, but our 



DIFFICULTIES CONCERNING PRAYER 127 

own ignorant and sinful hearts. It is like the pull of 
a rope from a small boat upon a great ship at 
anchor; It Is not the ship that moves, but the little 
boat. Prayer is not teasing God to supply the 
whims and selfish desires of spoiled children. It is 
the conversation of the spiritual family, talking with 
the Father, to learn what is best for us and our 
brothers. We must learn to get answers to our 
prayers, just as we do to get answers to our exam- 
ples in arithmetic ; and we may learn In the school of 
prayer, as In the school of life. All prayer has an 
answer; it may not be the exact thing that we ask 
but something better, wiser or higher. The waiting 
on God searches our motives, purifies our desires, 
teaches us God's higher purpose, and prepares us to 
receive God's best. 

3. Is prayer really answered? 

We can now turn to the final difficulty of prayer, 
which is central and fundamental. As an abstract 
proposition or theory, like the rational evidence for 
the existence of God, the possibilities of prayer can 
neither be proved nor disproved by a priori reason- 
ing. But prayer can be tested in experience. We 
believe In the reality of prayer for the following 
reasons : 

Prayer is an Ineradicable Instinct In the human 
heart. It Is as Inevitable to the spiritual life as 
breath Is to our physical life. Professor James 
shows that '*the reason why we do pray Is simply 
that we cannot help praying." "It seems probable 
that, in spite of all that 'science' may do to the con- 
trary, men will continue to pray to the end of time. 



128 FACING THE CRISIS 

. . . For most of us, a world with no such inner 
refuge . . . would be the abyss of horror." ^ No 
tribe, however savage, no people or nation has yet 
been found without religion, and prayer in some 
forms seems well-nigh universal in human experi- 
ence. 

Prayer survives because it has stood the test of 
experience. Unless it were a reality, it would suffer 
atrophy, decay and death; it would wither like an 
unused organ. Conversely, as the objective devel- 
ops the subjective, as environment stimulates appe- 
tite, as use develops function, the survival and de- 
velopment of prayer points toward the reality of a 
God who hears and answers. As truly as the lungs 
bear witness to the atmosphere, as the eye to light, 
and the wing of the bird to the air, so truly the 
survival of prayer bears witness to God. If it 
met no response, no answer, it would soon be weeded 
out of the race.^ 

Prayer has been tested by the experience of hu- 
manity. As we have seen, we hold that to be true 
which Is capable of repeated verification. Read 
through the great Psalms, and hear the voice of a 
thousand years of Jewish history uttered in prayer 
and petition. Do these sound like the vapid dreams 
of a morbid and superstitious imagination? Down 

* "Psychology," William James, Vol. i, page 316. 

'There is no hunger for anything not tasted, as John Fiskc, in 
his "Through Nature to God," has well shown; "there is no 
search for anything which is not in the environment, for the 
environment has always produced the appetite. Then, may not 
this native need of the soul have risen out of the divine origin of 
the soul? It would at least seem that it has steadily verified itself 
as a safe guide to reality." "Concerning Prayer," B. H. Streeter, 
p. 118. 



DIFFICULTIES CONCERNING PRAYER 129 

the centuries the human heart has prayed and re- 
peated the universal experience of the Psalmists of 
old, as they will be doubtless repeated to the end of 
time. 

Jesus prayed. Here is reason enough for me to 
test the possibility of prayer. If prayer could pro- 
duce such a life, such a character, such teaching of 
truth, could give such a conception of God and such 
fellowship with him, let me learn its secret, let me 
test its efficacy. If he needed to pray, how much 
more do we. Let us read again the record of his 
life and his teaching on prayer, and feel its ring of 
reality. Even today he is teaching men as, at their 
request, he taught his first disciples to pray. 

Men have prayed and tested the reality and power 
of prayer through the centuries since Christ. Ex- 
perimentally it seems to work. Men of prayer are 
men of God. There is a power, a peace in their lives 
which the prayerless do not know. The early dis- 
ciples had found in prayer a power which trans- 
formed them. The Apostle Paul seems to lay hold 
of this hidden secret which enables him to achieve 
the seemingly impossible. Men like Francis of 
Assisi, Martin Luther, John Wesley, and a great 
army of normal Christian people have found comfort 
and help in prayer. Their characters shine with a 
light not reflected by the prayerless. 

We can prove the reality of prayer only by pray- 
ing. No philosophy can prove or disprove it. No 
philosophy or science has ever shown that God 
cannot put a thought in the mind of man. If he can- 
not, he is more helpless than a little child or any man 



130 FACING THE CRISIS 

who asks and receives what he needs from a friend. 
If God can put a thought in the mind of man, he can 
thereby answer most prayers through human co- 
operation. 

Should anyone say that he does not know how to 
pray, he may soon learn the beginning of this simple 
art. Let him turn to the Sermon on the Mount, in 
Matthew 6:5-14. As a beginning Jesus teaches a 
typical prayer. Here are six simple petitions, three 
of them concerning God and three concerning our 
need. The prayer begins with ''Our Father," his 
name or character, his Kingdom of good, and his 
will on earth. It also embraces our daily bread, our 
debts, and our temptations. Of the six petitions, 
one only is for material or temporal need, and that 
just enough for one day's supply of food. The other 
five petitions are occupied with the great moral and 
spiritual ends of life, for man does not live by bread 
alone. Here is a model prayer for us. It is being 
uttered daily by men who are praying in every 
tongue, and by learning not its words, but its spirit, 
we too may enter into a new life of prayer. We may 
begin with the thought, 

"Speak to him thou for he hears, and spirit with spirit can 
meet; 
Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands to feet." 

But we shall end in the larger truth, 

"My need and thy great fulness meet, 
And I have all in thee." 



IX 

CONVERSION 

What is a Christian f How can one live a 
Christian life and what do you mean by conversion? 

In a developing world we are faced by that 
strange contradiction of life called sin. There seems 
to be something wrong with us, a kind of inner 
cleavage, a rift at the very center of personality. 
There is a maladjustment of life, a contradiction 
between the ideal and the actual, between what I 
might be and what I am. 

Sin is living for partial ends and the assertion of 
my lower self, against the expression of my best and 
truest self in right relations with God and with my 
fellow men. It is living from the false center of 
self, in correspondence with a lower material, and 
at times sensuous environment. It is a break with 
the higher environment of the personality and a 
denial of the nobler possibilities of life. It is miss- 
ing the mark. It is really a disease — the thriving of 
a lower parasitic form of life at the expense of the 
higher life. 

For Christians, Jesus represents the embodiment 
of the supreme possibilities of the higher and better 
life. A Christian is just a follower of Christ, one 
who is honestly trying to follow Jesus' way of life. 

131 



132 FACING THE CRISIS 

"A Christian is one who is responding to all the 
meanings which he finds In Christ." The first fol- 
lowers of Jesus knew little of orthodoxy, of creeds, 
or of conventional theological belief when they be- 
gan to follow him. They were just simple learners 
or followers of Jesus and that Is all that we need 
to be. 

For the Christian, all worthy aims are unified and 
find their driving power In supreme loyalty to Jesus 
and his cause. What is contrary to the ideals of 
Jesus, what will hurt his cause, whether In personal 
life, In business affairs, or in political relationships, 
you can count on the true Christian avoiding. What 
is in line with the ideals of Jesus, what will help 
forward his cause, to these you can count on a 
Christian giving himself with complete abandon. 
Seeking the Kingdom of God and his Righteousness 
is the center of his life and he finds all other true 
loyalties finding their place "added unto him," in 
relation to this supreme passion of his life. 

Biologically, life may be described as a two-fold 
relation of action and reaction between the organism 
and its environments. It is always active toward two 
main results — hunger and love, self-maintenance and 
the continuance of the race, the struggle for life and 
the struggle for the life of others, self-realization 
and the realization of the life of the species. Before 
these two dominant Instincts or capacities of life are 
fully developed, or If they are perverted, instead of 
hunger for life and its full realization, we have the 
manifestation of selfishness, or living for one's own 
partial ends, regardless of the welfare of others; 



CONVERSION 133 

and before love Is developed as the full sharing of 
life for the mutual benefit of all, we have lust, the 
desire to possess for our own selfish, partial ends 
without regard to the worth and welfare of others. 
What then is conversion? It is the process, 
whether sudden or gradual, by which this loyalty to 
Jesus becomes the reality of a person's life. For 
some it represents a series of forward steps. For 
others, who have been living contrary to Jesus and 
his ideals, it means literally turning around, a change 
In the moral direction of life. When the lost son 
came to himself he decided to go back to his father. 
Conversion is a turning from the false center of 
self to the true center of God as revealed In Jesus; 
from a base selfishness to a true self-realization In 
life more abundant; from the false lust of an anti- 
social life to the fullness of love as the complete 
sharing of life in limitless self-giving. For those 
who have grown up without relation to Jesus, con- 
version represents a change of spiritual center as 
radical as the shift from the earth as the false center 
of the Ptolemaic, to the true sun-centered Coper- 
nlcan system of astronomy. It is spiritual self-reali- 
zation in the adjustment of the Individual In the 
three relationships of life, religious, moral and 
social. It Is a new orientation to the spiritual uni- 
verse. It Is *'the birth of a new dominant affection 
by which the God consciousness hitherto marginal 
and vague becomes focal and dynamic." ^ Conver- 
sion means the unification of the divided self, or the 
victory of the true self In Its identification v/Ith the 

^ Saunders, "The Adventure of the Christian Soul." 



134 FACING THE CRISIS 

ideal, as a house no longer divided against itself. 
This involves three results. 

1. A new vision of God and of the meaning of the 
will of God in human life, resulting in a new sense 
of joy and power. 

2. Christ once a fact of history becomes now a 
fact of conscience and of experience. The lower 
self as the habitual center of one's personal energy 
is segmented, objectified as the "tempter,'* rejected 
and denied, as in the struggle in the soul of every 
man dramatically described by Stevenson in his "Dr. 
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." The lower nature is now 
renounced and lurks without instead of dominating 
within. 

3. A new enthusiasm for humanity, expressing 
itself in a life of service and sacrifice. The new 
man, for he is indeed "a new creature," is called not 
only to love God with all his heart or affection, with 
all his mind and thought, with all his strength and 
service, with all his soul or self, but he must love his 
neighbor as himself. The individual and the social 
aspects of the Christian life become the two poles of 
a current of full power, two coordinate hemispheres 
of the one full orbed reality of life. 

Conversion may be either sudden or gradual, ac- 
cording to one's temperament, training or past life. 
If sudden the "new man" looks with joy upon what 
seems to be a new world, in the words of Tagore, 
"The whole world was one glorious music and 
rhythm"; or as described in the record of John 
Masefield's "Everlasting Mercy," 



CONVERSION 136 

*'Oh glory of the lighted mind 
How dead I'd been, how dumb, how blind. 
The station brook to my new eyes 
Was bubbling out of paradise, 
The waters rushing from the rain 
Were singing Christ had risen again. 
I thought all earthly creatures knelt 
From rapture of the joy I felt.** 

Professor James, in his "Varieties of Religious 
Experience" defines conversion as the process by 
which "a life hitherto divided and consciously 
wrong, Inferior and unhappy, becomes united and 
consciously right, superior and happy In consequence 
of its firm hold on religious realities." ^ 

Multitudes of lives have found the reality of this 
experience of conversion, like those recorded in Har- 
old Begbie's "Broken Earthenware," forming In 
every age continuous additions to the Acts of the 
Apostles. As Pascal says, "that which happened to 
Jesus Christ is transacted in the soul of every Chris- 
tian." Thousands, or rather millions have found 

^ Summing up a vast field of human history covering many cen- 
turies and all types of mind, Professor James comes to the follow- 
ing scientific conclusions as to the reality of religious experience: 

1. "That the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe 
from which it draws its chief significance. 

2. "That union with or harmonious relation to this higher uni- 
verse is our true end. 

3. "That prayer or inner communion with the spirit thereof is a 
process wherein work is really done, and spiritual energy flows in 
and produces effects within the phenomenal world. 

4. "Religion includes a new zest which adds itself like a gift 
to life. 

5. "An assurance of safety and temper of peace and prepon- 
derance of loving affections." 

"God thus becomes the supreme reality. We and God have 
business with each other and in opening ourselves to his influence 
our deepest destiny is fulfilled. The universe takes a turn for the 
worse or better in proportion as each one of us fulfills or evades 
God's demands." — "Varieties of Religious Experience," p. 485. 



136 FACING THE CRISIS 

the experience of General Booth, "The Holy Spirit 
had shown me that my real welfare for time and 
eternity depended upon the surrender of myself to 
the service of God. After long controversy I made 
this submission, cast myself on his mercy, received 
the assurance of his pardon, and gave myself up to 
his service with all my heart." 

As to the means of realizing this spiritual life, 
there are three common errors to be avoided. First 
of all, no man can get right within, merely by out- 
ward forms and ceremonies. Outward acts and 
forms have their place if they represent inward 
spiritual reality. But the essence of religion Is an 
inward relationship, not an outward ceremonial. No 
mechanical or formal rite Is a substitute for this 
inward transformation. The Pharisee thought he 
was saved by his outward institutions and privileges ; 
by circumcision, the passover, the scrupulous tithing 
of petty trifles ; he overlooked the great essentials of 
justice and mercy, of love for God and man. 

Again, a man is not made right by purely selfish 
or legal good works to acquire merit. These have 
always been the first impulse of the natural man in 
every age and In every religion. But the inevitable 
failure of this method is evident in the very nature 
of the case. For religion, as we have seen, is not 
an attainment but an attitude, not the making of a 
record but the making of a man, not a series of 
Pharisaic meritorious works, but the loving personal 
relationship of a son to a Father. Many a modern 
man, who never dreams himself to be a Pharisee, 
sets up some subjective or arbitrary standard of his 



CONVERSION 137 

own of outward morality and because he is better 
than some others around him, or prides himself on 
his generous impulses, or has done "about as near 
right as he can," thinks he has all the religion he 
needs. He forgets that religion is not only doing 
right, but being right, with God, with one's self, 
with one's fellow men. 

A third error is avoided if we remember that 
religion does not consist in the pride of knowledge, 
nor in dead and formal "faith without works," nor 
in mere orthodoxy of belief. It is not outward 
familiarity but inward response that determines re- 
ligious reality. We are rightly related to God by 
faith alone, but true faith is never alone, it always 
manifests itself in works. Faith is the root, works 
are the fruit; faith is the cause, works are the 
result. 

On God's side conversion is the giving of a gift, 
on our part the receiving of it. Jesus, however, did 
not speak of this experience as of a deep theological 
mystery, but as the simplest and most natural thing 
in the world. In the first gospel he is recorded as 
speaking of it under such natural figures as simply 
entering a door or gate, accepting an invitation to a 
glad wedding feast, turning to God with the teach- 
able spirit of a little child. In the second gospel it is 
just believing a piece of good news, following a per- 
son in fellowship and service, with the resultant 
healing of a divided, broken personality so that life 
is made "whole" with all its powers restored. In 
the third gospel the experience on God's side is 
likened to the finding of a lost sheep by a shepherd 



138 FACING THE CRISIS 

or a lost coin by Its owner, and on the man^s side to 
the return of a lost son to his father. In the fourth 
gospel it Is the receiving of a person as an Indwelling 
guest in the heart, or, to an Ignorant woman. It is 
likened to taking a drink to quench the thirst of 
life.^ Only once to a theologian does he speak of 
the mystery of being "born from above," and after 
all what more is that, on the human side, than just 
entering life, or beginning to live as a little child? 
Becoming a Christian is just beginning to be one, 
becoming a learner of Christ's teaching and a fol- 
lower of his life. 

The clearest teaching of all Is that of the simple 
story of the son who lost his father. He was wrong 
with his father, with himself, with his family. He 
turned his back upon his father and his face to his 
own selfish love of sin. He was "lost'' to his father, 
that is, he was away from the one to whom he 
belonged. Rags, swine and harlots were only the 
outward symbols of the wrongs that started when 
he turned his back on his father, for he was equally 
wrong whether In rags or in respectability, with 
swine or with selfish Pharisees. Observe the man- 
ner of his return when he said, "I will arise and go to 
my father/* He did not stay away to earn merit or 
become more respectable. And "he came to him- 
self,** for he had been living beside himself, or 
beneath himself, out of his true self. As the mean- 
ing of the word conversion implies, he simply turned 

^See Matthew 7:13, 18:2, 22:2. Mark 1:15, 17. Luke 15. John 
1:12, 3:16, 4:10, 14., 5:24, 10:9, 10. 



CONVERSION 139 

around and came home to a new life of joy and 
service. 

This challenge must face every reader of these 
lines. Professor James in his classic essay "The 
Will to Believe," shows that every proposal to act 
comes to us In the form of an hypothesis. It may be 
an issue that Is either living or dead; it may be one 
that is either forced or avoidable ; it may be either 
momentous or trivial. The question that we now 
have before us Is that of the very meaning of life, 
involving also the questions of the existence and 
nature of God, the value of Christ, the call of duty, 
of social obligation and of human destiny. It is a 
living issue, it is unavoidable, and it is momentous. 
It affects character and destiny for time and eter- 
nity. It is for every man the supreme question, for 
upon it all the issues of life depend. 

This, in a word, is the meaning of conversion, the 
way of entrance into the Christian life. Has the 
reader taken that way for himself? 



X 

MORAL MASTERY 

In the struggle imth temptation, what is the 
secret of moral mastery over one's self? How can 
I get victory over sin? 

In discussing conversion we found that sin was 
living on the lower instead of the higher plane, for 
the lower self instead of the higher. If this is so, 
the secret of victory over sin will be not violently 
overcoming the lower desires but of lifting life to a 
higher plane, not in repression of the lower but in 
expression of the higher, not in seeking to eradicate 
evil but in overcoming it with good, not in morbidly 
dwelling upon our sins but in forgetting ourselves 
in the abandon of a great quest and in seeking first 
the highest aim of life. 

Psychologists who deal with abnormal behavior, 
say it arises usually from the repressing of the great 
natural instincts of life. Thus man has the instincts 
of pugnacity and of sex. These are not, as the as- 
cetic morbidly believed, carnal and sinful, but nor- 
mal inherited instincts, God-given potentialities of 
life. The instinct of self-assertion and pugnacity 
may be wrongly developed in the street fighter or 
gunman, or realized as a great driving power in a 
Wilberforce as he battles with the slave trade for 
forty-six years and helps to free, without a bloody 

140 



MORAL MASTERY 141 

war, all the slaves In the British Empire. In the 
same way sex Is the basis of much of the highest 
idealism in life. It may be perverted to vice or 
crime, morbid Introspection, or Ingrowing repres- 
sion that will fester and poison the whole life, or it 
may be lifted to a higher plane of normal healthy 
expression. 

It must be recognized at the start that here is a 
great dynamo of power that may be geared for 
destruction or construction. We must abandon the 
false and ancient dualism between the sacred and 
secular, the spiritual and physical. 

Modern psychologists show that for moral vic- 
tory we need not primarily struggle for repression, 
but "sublimation" and expression. By sublimation 
we mean giving realization to a normal instinct on a 
higher plane, or If repressed in one way giving a 
new channel of expression in another way that is 
good. It is the forgoing a lower, limited, Imme- 
diate gratification of desire, for a nobler, richer, 
more lasting satisfaction on a higher level of life.^ 
Do not retire to a cave or monastery to "mortify 
the flesh," but In healthy social life forget the strug- 
gle by losing yourself In service, in a great enthusi- 

^Thus sex is the physical basis of the highest and finest develop- 
ments in life. It is normal, natural and of divine origin. For 
"God created man in his own image . . . male and female 
created he them. And God blessed them . , . and God saw every- 
thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." From 
this God-given basis of sex, when developed on the higher, 
spiritual plane, springs love, manhood, womanhood, the home, the 
family, fatherhood, motherhood, our very conception of God as 
"Father," parental care, sacrifice, service, chivalry, the love of 
beauty, art and much of our highest experience in morality and 
religion. Let us not therefore look upon that which God has 
blessed as common, or unclean, or as some secret, hidden thing. 



142 FACING THE CRISIS 

asm for a goal so high that the lure of the lower 
life will appear loathsome and morally impossible. 
Jesus' way of life and his quest of the Kingdom of 
God, will afford the most successful antidote for the 
lower life. There will come times, however, of 
choice and of struggle, as when Jesus retired to the 
wilderness to have it out once for all with certain 
temptations, and then, consumed by a great purpose 
and dominated by a major choice, lived on such a 
high plane that all the lower attractions were ex- 
cluded and exposed as false denials and contradic- 
tions of the true life. We usually fail, not because 
we do not struggle hard enough, but because we live 
on the lower levels of life, because we lack, the ex- 
pulsive power of a spiritual dynamic. 

We have seen that sin is selfishness, the assertion 
of self-will against my right relation to God, to 
myself, to my fellow-man. We have seen that the 
two basic instincts or tendencies of life, hunger and 
love, when undeveloped or perverted manifest them- 
selves in selfishness and lust. These correspond to 
two prevailing types of temptation, sins of disposi- 
tion rooted in selfishness, and sins of appetite rooted 
in lust. 

In order to study the psychology of temptation, 
we may take as typical of the latter the illustration 
of Esau selling his birthright for a mess of pot- 
tage, or the progressive steps in David's fall.^ St. 
Augustine sums up the psychology of sin in four 
words — "A look, a form, a fascination, a fall." ^ 

* Genesis 25:29-34; Hebrews 12:16. II Samuel 11:1-5, I4"i7» 
12:1-15. 

* "Imago, cogitatio, delectatio, assensio." 



MORAL MASTERY 143 

We may trace the psychology of Esau's temptation 
In these four successive steps. 

1. Attention. There is first the concentration of 
attention on the object of his selfish appetite, upon 
a partial not a true end, upon the pottage rather 
than the birthright. Upon this fine edge of atten- 
tion turns the quivering scale of life, for ''what gets 
your attention gets you." We become like what we 
look at. The stream of thought is controlled by 
sensation from without and the law of association 
within the mind. The whole trend of life is deter- 
mined by the direction of attention — "whoso look- 
eth," directing his attention to the lustful and low, 
commits sin. 

2. Imagination. Attention leads to the forming 
of a mental picture thrown into the foreground of 
the clamorous and imperative present, offering the 
promise of immediate gratification. By filling the 
mental screen and concentrating the focus of the 
mind on Immediate gratification, the man becomes 
blind to the reality of the life-long loss of the birth- 
right, of character, of happiness and of real life. 
Every temptation is at bottom a lie, a false promise. 
And it begins in the mind. Here we stand or fall. 
"All character begins in thought; and all thought 
tends to action." As you think, so you will do. 

3. Desire. Attention and imagination arouse the 
strength of desire, deep-rooted back In habit and 
heredity, in man and in the brute. Desire rises, 
clamorous to possess and to satisfy itself. It gains 
strength by concentrating attention on Its object, 
until the man is finally swept past "redemption 



144 FACING THE CRISIS 

point" in the Niagara current above the falls, and 
is lost in the roaring torrent that dashes over the 
precipice of sin. 

4. Choice. By the concentration of attention, by 
the false picture of imagination, by aroused desire, 
gradually thought by thought, the man gives way, by 
growing famiharity, by compromise, till the will has 
yielded. It is not usually by one decisive conscious 
choice that a man falls, but by a gradual transition 
in the choice of the lower evil which gives the false 
promise of satisfaction. 

Thus Esau despised his birthright and went on 
his way in the disgust of satiety, for appetite is 
long and satisfaction is short, and the glutting of 
the momentary desires of the lower appetites can 
never satisfy the higher and eternal demands of 
man's nature which is essentially spiritual. Thus 
Esau reenacts the scene pictured in the Garden of 
Eden which is repeated in the tragedy of every dis- 
illusioned life. How different sin looks before and 
after it is committed! Temptation is first suggested 
as "good for food," "pleasant to the eyes," and "to 
be desired to make one wise"; but after the man's 
■fall the hideous lie stands out in its true colors as 
"the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes, and 
the pride of life." ^ Instead of promised "food" 
one finds the disgust of satiety; the "delight to the 
eyes" gives place to the shame of sin; and instead of 
wisdom, man finds folly, misery and death. Human 
history on its negative side has been one long dis- 
illusionment of a prodigal humanity feeding on 

^Genesis 3:6 and I John 3:16. 



MORAL MASTERY 145 

husks. Once and for ever, every temptation is at 
bottom a lie. It is a series of false promises. The 
first lie is, "Just this once, there is no harm" ; the 
second, "Once more, and then I will swear off"; the 
third, "Now I have fallen I might as well go for 
a sheep as a lamb"; the fourth, "Now I have failed 
there is no hope, what is the use of trying again?" 
Each is false and leads to further sin. The only 
safeguard for a credulous humanity is to know the 
truth, and the truth shall make us free. 

When once a man has fallen, what are the results 
of sin? In its nature, sin is rebellion against God 
and it results in alienation or separation from him. 
It weakens the character and tends to a disintegra- 
tion of the integrity of the personality. Even if 
forgiven, the man reaps what he sows and he is not 
the man he would have been had he not fallen. 
Further, sin robs a man of power for service. It 
leaves him a blinded and impotent Samson just when 
his fellow-men need a deliverer and a leader. It 
results in the loss of happiness to the individual, 
and finally in social misery. It is the blighting and 
blasting of human life. 

If such are the results of sin, of which we all 
know something in experience, what is the psychol- 
ogy of victory? It lies, in a word, in "the expulsive 
power of a new affection." One impulse can only 
really be displaced by another. Victory depends 
on our habits of life, upon our master purpose and 
its expulsive power, upon the clear vision this gives 
us of the false lure of the lower alternatives. But 
in the formative crises of choice, in the inevitable 



146 FACING THE CRISIS 

times of struggle victory turns chiefly on the single 
fact of attention. Here is the secret of victory in 
a nut-shell — the will to attend to the good. But the 
will may be weak and well-nigh impotent unless 
motivated by some dominant affection, ideal or rela- 
tionship. Only when ideas are touched with emo- 
tion do they become dynamic ideals. Only a higher 
love will expel the lower lust. As Dr. Richard 
Cabot says, '^Passion can be mastered only by in- 
tenser passion. By consecration of the affection 
we gain victory over the lower impersonal affec- 
tion." 1 

President King writes, 

"The problem of Christian character is the prob- 
lem of meeting temptation. That in turn is the 
problem of self-control. The center of self-control 
IS the will and the center of will is attention, i.e., vic- 
tory over temptation depends on ability to hold 
attention firmly fixed on the higher considerations. 
. . . Do not dally with temptation. Do not tarry 
in the presence of it. Do not do in thought the act 
to which you are tempted. The thinking has its 
immediate bodily effect, its tendency to pass into 
act. When you dally with temptation, when you 
see how far you can go in imagination without top- 
pling over the precipice you are simply heating some 
brain center and getting a thought ready to dis- 
charge into act. You are playing with sparks over 
a powder mine, nay putting your finger on the trig- 
ger of a gun and beginning to press it and yet ex- 
pecting it not to discharge." "The great secret of 
all living is the persistent staying in the presence of 
the best." 

*"What Men Live By." Richard C. Cabot. 



MORAL MASTERY 147 

Temptation makes its appeal not as a cold abstrac- 
tion but to flesh and blood; and victory will be found 
for most men not in abstract considerations of vir- 
tue, but in the warmth and passion of a personal 
relationship. Some dominant affection must be 
found stronger than the lure of the lower appetite. 
Victory is sometimes found over a particular temp- 
tation in the human relationship of "falling in love.'' 

"The thoughts ye cannot stay with brazen chains, 
A girl's hair lightly binds." 

But as a matter of historic fact, the chief impetus 
for moral victory has been found in a vital, personal 
relationship to Jesus Christ. In four words we may 
describe the psychology of victory as we have that 
of sin. 

I. Attend to Christ; ''looking away from all else 
unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith." ^ 
Beholding him, we are changed into the same image 
from character to character. We become like what 
we habitually behold. A man who looks at obscene 
pictures rouses the impure within himself. The 
men who associated with Jesus became strangely like 
him. Sin is caused by a narrowing of consciousness 
to the point of self-gratification. Its corrective will 
be in a widening of consciousness to take in one's 
whole birthright and the larger realities of life; 
or in the moment of crisis, by a concentration upon 
that which has the greatest moral expulsive power 
in life. In the actual experience of Christians that 
power will be found to be in Jesus himself. 

^Hebrews 12:1, 2. 



148 FACING THE CRISIS 

2. Imagine Christ, his presence, his love, his 
purity, the kingdom of life and happiness and vic- 
tory which he offers to realize In our experience, and 
the bitter misery of shame and defeat and death that 
result from sin. "Ye shall know the truth and the 
truth shall make you free." 

3. Arouse the love of Christ in your heart, not as 
an empty emotion, but as a mighty constraining Im- 
pulse against sin, combining all the motive of the 
love of God and the ability to serve our fellow-men 
if we overcome. "For their sakes I sanctify myself 
that they also may be sanctified." 

4. Strengthen the will and reenforce it by that 
act which is found to have the largest expulsive 
power for good in your life, whether It be the read- 
ing of scripture, or prayer, or by realizing the pres- 
ence of Christ. Choose Christ decisively, then count 
the issue closed and yourself as "dead to sin" as a 
moral impossibility. Protracted dallying with temp- 
tation and continual longing for the lower gratifica- 
tion leads you into a sensuous state which almost 
inevitably tends toward its gratification. In the 
mountains of India we had to live "above the fever 
line." 

All these four can be summed up in a word which 
epitomizes the experience of Jesus' followers, "He 
that abideth in him sinneth not."^ 

Let us make of every temptation a positive op- 
portunity for character. It is not only a lure down- 
ward, it is also a call upward. Never be dis- 
couraged. This is not a matter of a moment but 

^I John 1:5-10, 3:1-6. 



MORAL MASTERY 149 

the permanent central issue of life in the develop- 
ment of character. One victory won and you may 
become forever a new man. The old psychology 
said, "a man does what he is"; past character ex- 
presses itself in the present act; but the new psy- 
chology says with equal truth and more hope, "a 
man is what he does," the present act determines 
the future character. Do and you will be, act and 
you will become, overcome now and you become for- 
ever a new man.^ Like Jesus after his temptation 
in the wilderness, you will return in the power of 
the Spirit for a life of spiritual service and strength. 
In good as well as in evil, "Sow a thought, you reap 
an act; sow an act, you reap a habit; sow a habit, 
you reap a character; sow a character, you reap a 
destiny." 

Professor James in his chapter on Habit sug- 
gests three psychological principles which we may 
well apply to our spiritual life. 

1. "In the acquisition of a new habit, or the leav- 
ing of an old one, we must take care to launch our- 
selves with as strong and decided an initiative as 
possible. 

2. "Never suffer an exception to occur. Each 
lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which 
one is carefully winding up. It is necessary above 
all things never to lose a battle. It is surprising 
how soon a desire will die of inanition if it is 
never fed. Without unbroken advance there is no 
such thing as accumulation of ethical forces pos- 
sible. 

*H. C. King, "A Rational Fight for Character." 



150 FACING THE CRISIS 

3. "Seize the very first possible opportunity to 
act on every resolution you make and on every emo- 
tional prompting you may experience In the direction 
of the habits you aspire to gain. Could the young 
but realize how soon they will become mere walk- 
ing bundles of habits, they would give more heed 
to their conduct while In the plastic state. We are 
spinning our own fates, good or evil. Every smal- 
lest stroke of virtue or vice leaves Its never so little 
scar. Nothing we ever do Is, in strict scientific 
llteralness, 'wiped out.' Such is the testimony of 
Psychology. '* 

Remember finally, since temptation is so strong 
that it is beyond your strength, that you need also 
some spiritual power that is beyond you. Here is 
the central secret of victory over sin — "He that 
abideth in him sinneth not." ^ 

*What God has purposed "He is able to perform." "He is able 
to make all grace abound unto you, that ye, having always all 
sufficiency in everything," may have victory over every tempta- 
tion. "He is able to save to the uttermost" every tempted man. 
"He is able to keep you from falling, to guard you from stum- 
bling." "He is able to make the weak brother stand." And God 
asks "Believe ye that I am able to do this" for you? If God is 
for us, who is against us? See Eph. i. 4; I Thess. iv. 4; iii. 8; 
V. 23; a Cor. ix. 8; Heb. vii. 35; Jude 24, I John 3:6. 



XI 

IS OUR RELIGION WORTH EXPORTING? 

In viezu> of the great evils and the unsolved prob- 
lems which we are facing in our own country , 
how are we justified in undertaking foreign mis- 
sions to other lands? Is Christianity such as ours 
worth exporting? 

We admit the staggering evils and overwhelming 
problems found in America today. We shall try 
franklyto face these In the section on social and in- 
dustrial questions. But one of our greatest national 
evils is selfish isolation. We shall never save our- 
selves nor help the world by selfishness. Turning 
our backs upon the world's need will not Improve 
our own condition. In serving our fellow-men and 
other nations we may help to solve our own prob- 
lems. As in the case of the individual, the nation 
that saveth its life shall lose it and the one that 
loseth its life In service shall find it. Are we to 
become a Dives among the nations with a hungry 
world knocking with gaunt and bony hands at our 
gates of brass? If so we shall lose our own soul. 

If we go abroad to serve, either in missions or in 
commerce, It should not be without a deep sense 
of the need at home and of our own unworthiness, 
and It must be in no false sense of superiority. We 
must go to recognize the good in every race, nation, 

151 



152 FACING THE CRISIS 

civilization and religion. Without such good no 
race or religion would have survived and endured 
until the present. Unless we have a deep love and 
sympathy for the people among whom we work we 
will not succeed. 

Though we must frankly admit our national short- 
comings and the elements of worth in every other 
race and religion, we must not be blind to the re- 
sponsibility for our privileges that must be shared. 
First and foremost, there is the privilege of the 
knowledge of God as revealed in Jesus which has 
been the source of most of what is best morally and 
spiritually in our own civilization. Each religion 
may be tested by four standards — its conception of 
God, of man, of duty and of destiny. Christianity 
in its primitive and purest form contains four dy- 
namic concepts: one God, as a loving heavenly 
Father of all men; one humanity of universal broth- 
erhood, undivided by race or rank; one Saviour, re- 
vealing the nature of God, the duty of man and the 
way of life, in the self-sacrificing service of love; one 
destiny, in the realization of personal life, abundant, 
expanding and eternal, and of social redemption, in 
the building of a Christian social order. God as 
Father, man as brother, Jesus as Saviour and the 
commonweal of God as our social goal are the four 
unique possessions which we must not keep for our- 
selves alone but must share with all men. 

While whole volumes would be required to do 
justice to the elements of truth and beauty which 
exist in other religions, yet mere sentiment and 
sympathy must not in common honesty blind us to 



IS OUR RELIGION WORTH EXPORTING? 153 

their radical defects. If we fairly examine these 
religions in the light of Jesus' teaching we shall find 
that to the believers of each we may bring a unique 
message of life which they deeply need. 

Judaism, despite its high ethical monotheism and 
prophetic promise, was never able to break beyond 
the boundaries of an exclusive nationalism and to 
become a gospel to Gentiles, or a universal religion, 
save as it was fulfilled in Jesus himself. 

Confucianism, while it contains high, abstract 
ethical principles, is by its inevitable traditions and 
associations, riveted to the past and to the social 
order of the conservative China of the ancients. 
Grounded in a self-centered "superior man," it lacks 
the mighty dynamic of a great monotheism. It has 
recognized no relation of the common people to a 
personal God, it has deified ancestors but revealed 
no Heavenly Father. It has permitted polygamy, 
and polytheism, but it is without a Saviour, without 
prayer, without adequate comfort in life or death. 
Its rigid conservatism affords no principle of prog- 
ress. It has never appealed to or satisfied the 
masses even in China itself and offers no religious 
challenge to other nations. 

Hinduism is the religion of contemplation and 
aims not at the realization of personality in com- 
plete relationships, but at absorption into the in- 
finite. If God alone is real, the individual man, 
who to Jesus was of infinite worth, becomes an 
illusion; history, science, the whole material world 
and human life are a dream. Offering an esoteric, 
pantheistic philosophy for the privileged few of 



154 FACING THE CRISIS 

high caste, but without an adequate motive of service 
for the many who are left in animism, polytheism, 
idolatry and superstition, it breaks down both in 
ideal and in practice. With all its elements of 
beauty and truth which will survive, it has never 
been able to purge itself of the foul and Ignoble. It 
has given no clear and consistent view of destiny in 
the mists of rebirth and almost endless transmigra- 
tion in this world, and of impersonal absorption of 
the individual in the life to come. India is its em- 
bodiment and illustration. Bound by the social sys- 
tem of caste, it offers no missionary message for all 
mankind and no final goal for humanity. 

Buddhism counts not only man and the universe 
but even the Absolute as illusion. The world is not 
to be redeemed or overcome but renounced. Per- 
sonal life is not to be realized but rejected. The 
mother who has lost her child is not to hope for 
reunion with her loved one in a life after death, 
but to love no more, for love and desire are not to 
be satisfied but suppressed. The goal of Buddhism 
is no new social order, no Kingdom of God on earth, 
but a dim, distant, indescribable Nirvana. It offers 
no adequate social gospel. With the static hope- 
less atheism of Southern Buddhism and the super- 
stition of many gods and demons in Northern Asia, 
it does not seem to offer any challenging Ideal of 
hope to the enlightened world of today. 

Islam, by its bold monotheism and stern morality, 
has lifted the degraded polythelsts of Arabia and 
the savage cannibals of Africa. But Its God, Instead 
of being a loving Father In Heaven is the apotheosis 



IS OUR RELIGION WORTH EXPORTING? 155 

of autocratic power, a *'Sultan In the sky." Man is 
a submissive subject rather than a son. He is under 
legal religious rules rather than a constraining love, 
under an earthly absolutism rather than the freedom 
of democracy. Islam commanded propaganda by 
the sword rather than by a cross of sacrifice. It has 
cast its darkest shadow over womanhood in coun- 
tenancing slavery, polygamy, concubinage and un- 
limited divorce, even in its authentic source, the 
Koran. The fruit of Islam Is Turkey, and its illus- 
tration Is In the lands the Moslem has conquered. 
It has always sprung from or tended toward a 
desert. 

Only In Jesus do we find simply and consistently 
the truth of one loving, holy God as universal 
Father, man as son of God united in one brother- 
hood, both bound together by love, the principle of 
their common nature, and expressed in service for 
a universal Kingdom of God.^ 

Under these non-Christian religions the mass of 
mankind is still living. We go not to destroy but 
to fulfill all the aspirations of the human heart and 
of the ethnic religions. In the continents of Asia 
and Africa alone, half the human race still cannot 
read or write in any language. On the mainland of 
Asia as a whole and throughout the greater part of 
Africa, nine-tenths of the children are not at school. 
Half of the human race is relatively poor. Half of 
them are beyond the reach of modern medical sci- 

* Hegel speaks of Christianity as the one religion of Spirit which 
proclaims at once the supreme value of the individual and the 
need of the society to bring him to perfection. — Gwatkin, "The 
Knowledge of God," I, 256. 



156 FACING THE CRISIS 

ence. Over half of them still worship God through 
the imperfect symbol of some idol or fetish that 
misrepresents him rather than represents him as a 
loving Father. Half of humanity has never heard 
the good news of Jesus' way of life. For every two 
thousand Christians in America, we send one to that 
half of humanity while one thousand nine hundred 
and ninety-nine stay at home. As truly as the 
Apostle Paul carried the life-giving Gospel to the 
continent of our savage ancestors in Europe, when 
he responded to the call "Come over and help us," 
so truly may we carry the same dynamic of a new 
way of life back to the continent of Asia, in their 
unconscious and unuttered need, "Come back and 
help us." The East with all its latent worth and 
passionate possibilities asks the return of the gift 
of life which they gave to us. They too are facing 
the crisis of the new world situation. 

It is not a question merely of sending out a few 
missionaries. We must humanize and Christianize 
our entire impact upon other nations. We need, as 
Basil Mathews says, "the sustained labor of a mani- 
fold moral leadership, rooted in spiritual reality." 
"This new world order will be triumphantly achieved 
only through the free enlistment of this generation 
of young men and women for the common service 
of the civil servant, the teacher, and the missionary; 
the artist, the doctor, and the nurse ; the soldier and 
sailor, the social worker, the lawyer, the engineer, 
the planter, the priest, and the prophet, the member 
of Parliament, the parent, and the merchant." 

There are special needs in the present period of 



IS OUR RELIGION WORTH EXPORTING? 157 

transition in the world's life. Apart from certain 
primitive pioneer fields hitherto neglected or in- 
accessible, from now on in the great mission fields we 
need quality rather than quantity. Only carefully 
chosen and fully qualified men and women should go 
as missionaries. Only those should be sent who can 
really represent Christ as his interpreters and ambas- 
sadors, who can bring the best from their own lands 
and appreciate the best in the countries to which 
they go. 

Again, we should go not so much to he leaders as 
to make leaders, not to assume an autocratic con- 
trol of mission "agents" but to develop an indig- 
enous leadership in friendly cooperation with the 
people and to count our mission a temporary failure 
until responsibility for the work is first shared with 
and then transferred to them. Autocracy and pater- 
nalism linger long in political, Industrial and re- 
ligious life, both at home and abroad. If we follow 
Jesus' way we must believe that men can be trusted, 
in government, In industry and on the mission field. 
The people themselves possess the latent capacity 
for leadership and we must seek rapidly to develop 
it. 

And lastly, let us remember that we go to an 
awakening modern world, which is facing the crisis 
of national, racial, industrial or religious upheaval. 
The students in the universities of Japan, China and 
India are studying the most advanced modern 
science and philosophy. They are acquainted not 
only with the principles of evolution and historical 
criticism- but often with the most radical literature 



168 FACING THE CRISIS 

also. No obsolete medievalism or obscurantism 
or appeal to the authority of orthodoxy will avail. 
A missionary must know the problems of the mod- 
ern world and be able to meet them. He should 
have not only an individual but also a social gospel 
to meet the rapid industrialization of Japan, China 
and India. He should not stand helpless without 
vision or message or remedy, as childhood, woman- 
hood and manhood are consumed under inhuman 
conditions of low wages and long hours in order to 
produce swollen profits and fortunes for a few prof- 
iteers and rivet a system of oppressive capitalism 
upon the Orient of the future. For weary cen- 
turies to come these lands must not follow the dis- 
credited methods of Western capitalism and indus- 
trialism. They need immediately the social message 
of Jesus practically applied to their appalling social 
and industrial conditions. A young missionary can- 
not do this if he has only been trained in dead lan- 
guages and formal orthodoxy with no reference to 
the crying social needs of the modern world. He 
must have a whole gospel and be ready to apply it 
to the whole of life in these awakening lands. 

The contrast of the awakened modern Orient and 
the medieval Western student is shown in a letter 
written by the great Indian poet, Tagore. A young 
volunteer from a Western college had informed the 
poet of his momentous decision to come to India, 
and of his intention to be "kind to the natives." 
We quote it not as agreeing with all its implications 
but as illustrating the attitude of leaders in Asia 
today and of the absolute necessity of love as the 



IS OUR RELIGION WORTH EXPORTING? 159 

greatest thing In the world. The lett'^r shows that 
they are facing a crisis in foreign missions as well 
as at home. 

J 
Dear Mr. 



I have read your letter with pleasure. I have 
only one thing to say — it is this : Do not be always 
trying to preach your doctrine, but give yourself in 
love. Your Western mind is too much obsessed 
with the idea of conquest and possession, your in- 
veterate habit of proselytism is another form of it. 
Christ never preached himself or any dogma or 
doctrine — he preached the love of God. The ob- 
ject of a Christian should be to be like Christ — 
never to be like a coolie-recruiter trying to bring 
coolies to his master's tea-garden. Preaching your 
doctrine is no sacrifice at all — it Is indulging in a 
luxury, far more dangerous than all luxuries of 
material living. It breeds an illusion in your mind 
that you are doing your duty . . . that you are 
wiser and better than your fellow beings. But the 
real preaching is In being perfect, which is through 
meekness and love and self-dedication. 

If you have In you your pride of race, pride of 
sect and pride of personal superiority strong, then 
it is no use to try to do good to others. They will 
reject your gift, or even if they do accept It they will 
not be morally benefited by it — instances of which 
can be seen in India every day. On the spiritual 
plane you cannot do good until you he good. You 
cannot preach the Christianity of the Christian sect 
until you be like Christ; and then you do not preach 
Christianity but love of God which Christ did. 

You have repeatedly said that your standard of 
living is not likely to be different from that of the 
"natives" — but one thing I ask you, will you be able 
to make yourself one with those whom you call 



160 FACING THE CRISIS 

"natives," not merely in habits but in love? For it 
is utterly degrading to accept any benefit but that 
which is offered in the spirit of love. God is love — 
and all that we receive from his hands blesses us — 
but when a man tries to usurp God's place and as- 
sumes the role of a giver of gifts and does not come 
as a mere purveyor of God's love, then it is all 
vanity. 

Yours faithfully, 

Rabindranath Tagore. 



PART II: SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL 
QUESTIONS 

XII 
CHALLENGING PROBLEMS 

What are the outstanding social and industrial 
problems confronting us today? 

What is the solution of our race problem, es- 
pecially with regard to the twelve million Negroes 
in America? 

In our international relations, what should be 
our attitude toward war? Is war ever justifiable? 
How can we put an end to it? 

What should be our attitude toward labor 
unions and to labor s claim to the right of col- 
lective bargaining? 

What is the "Social GospeV^ and what is the 
social function of the church? 

What is the Christian solution of our industrial, 
racial and international problems? 

What are the outstanding social and industrial 
problems confronting us in facing the crisis today? 

We must Include the political problem of selfish 
graft on the one hand and equally selfish profiteer- 
ing on the other; our acute and unsolved race prob- 
lem; our serious industrial strife, with America lead- 
ing the world in the number of strikes ; the injustice 
of vast wealth for the few and poverty for the many; 
the problem of the open shop drive, and *'the denial 

161 



162 FACING THE CRISIS 

of the right and opportunity to form effective or- 
ganizations" on the part of labor; the twelve-hour 
day and the seven-day week which still continue in 
several industries in this country;^ the labor spy 
system in industry; the problem of freedom of 
speech, post-war propaganda, and a corrupt press; 
and international problems that threaten the world 
with war. 

We have seen that the recent war left the world 
confronted by three overwhelming problems, and 
rent asunder by three great cleavages of humanity, 
in national, racial and class or industrial strife. This 
new national, racial and class consciousness, this ris- 
ing spirit of democracy with the demand for equal 
opportunity, is usually resented by the privileged 
nation, race or class in power, as a menace to their 
long cherished special interests, hence the present 
world-wide unrest and strife. 

Vast changes are sweeping over the world. The 
writer stood recently at the Three Emperors' Cor- 
ner in Upper Silesia, where the ancient empires of 
Russia, Prussia and Austria met, and where the 
three emperors came together to make their com- 
pact to defeat Napoleon. What a change has taken 
place there today. Where now are these dynasties 

^ Horace B. Drury — Taylor Society Bulletin, February, 1921. 
See also "Three Shifts in Steel," The Survey, March 5, 1921. The 
Federated American Engineering Societies have made a study stat- 
ing that there are 40 to 50 industries in the United States involv- 
ing a certain amount of continuous operation. It is estimated that 
the number of shift workers is somewhere between 500,000 and 
1,000,000. The number of men on 12-hour shifts in the period 
preceding the depression was about 300,000. One-half of this 
number were within the steel industry. — Iron Age, Feb. 23, 1922, 
p. 521. 



CHALLENGING PROBLEMS 163 

and empires? The Romanoffs, the Hapsburgs and 
the HohenzoUerns that ruled most of the continent 
of Europe up to the outbreak of the war, have 
passed away. Russia, Germany, Austria and the 
surrounding nations have become republics, and free 
nations are gradually rising out of the wreck of the 
old autocracies. Similar changes are taking place 
throughout the world. 

We are standing at the beginning of a new creative 
epoch in history. We are already in the midst of 
one of the great migrations of the human spirit. The 
tides of democracy are sweeping around the world. 
We are indeed facing a crisis. Great as was the 
political change wrought in France by the French 
Revolution, greater still will be the change for the 
world In this new era, political, social and industrial. 
The old world of special privilege for the few, 
whether of autocracy, aristocracy or plutocracy is 
doomed. We have seen that there is an old order 
of materialism and of selfish privilege supported 
by the competitive and coercive force of militarism, 
with chronic latent strife breaking out periodically 
into overt war. This old order is weighed in the 
balances and found wanting. But a new social order, 
which a Galilean carpenter called the Kingdom of 
God, is coming. As General Smuts said: *'The 
old order is dying all about us. It must also die 
within us." 

We have seen that there were three great social 
problems in the world today, national, racial and 
industrial. These are the three crucial issues in 
America also. Politically, In our city, state and 



164 FACING THE CRISIS 

national governments, we are facing the two-fold 
danger of selfish bribery and corruption on the one 
hand and of selfish profiteering on the other. A 
leading social worker in New York said after a re- 
cent election when the party of "good government" 
was defeated, "I would rather vote for Tammany 
Hall with its known vice and crime, bribery and cor- 
ruption, than for your so-called party of good gov- 
ernment which is often controlled by the selfish prof- 
iteering of the money power that would sell out 
the franchises and exploit the people quite as read- 
ily and far more successfully than Tammany Hall." 



XIII 
THE RACE PROBLEM 

What is the solution of our race problem, es- 
pecially mith regard to our relation to the twelve 
million Negroes in America? 

Approximately one-third of the world's popula- 
tion is white, nearly a third is yellow and a little 
more than a third black or brown. Thus two- 
thirds of mankind are colored. Does not this imply 
that if we believe in humanity, as such, we must 
believe in colored people, for they form the ma- 
jority of mankind? 

We are especially concerned, however, with the 
Immigrant landing upon our shores ^ and with the 
twelve million Negroes in America whose ances- 
tors were dragged here in slavery during part of 
the four centuries that so-called ^'Christian" nations 
ravaged Africa. We must face the problem in view 
of the stubborn fact of race prejudice. Mr. H. G. 
Wells says: "I am convinced myself that there is 
no more evil thing in this present world than race 
prejudice; none at all! I write deliberately — it is 
the worst single thing in life now. It justifies and 
holds together more baseness, cruelty and abomina- 

*In Greater New York 35.46 per cent of the population are 
foreign born ; while 76.42 per cent are either foreign born or the 
children of foreign born; approximately one in four is a Hebrew. 

165 



166 FACING THE CRISIS 

tion than any other sort of error In the world/' 
Lord Bryce In his "Race Sentiment as a Factor In 
History" shows "that down till the days of the 
French Revolution there has been very little In any 
country, or at any time, of self-conscious racial feel- 
ing. . . . No people was ever prouder than the 
Romans nor with better reason, yet in the fullness 
of their strength when they held themselves called 
by fate to rule the world, they showed little con- 
tempt for their provincial subjects and no racial 
aversion." 

Whatever may be said of the past, we face today 
In America an almost Incalculable and unbelievable 
race prejudice that often shows Itself In lawlessness 
and mob violence. Ex-President Taft In an address 
before the Civic Forum In New York In 1908 de- 
clared that there had been in America, between 1885 
and 1908, only 2286 legal executions, while during 
the same period there had been 131,951 cases of 
murder and homicide. Although there has been a 
slight Improvement In recent years, since 1885 we 
have put to death up to the present time over 4000 
by lynching and mob violence, an average of two 
every week or more than one hundred every year 
for the last thirty-seven years. Nor can this be 
considered a sectional matter as only five states In 
the union have clean hands with regard to lynching. 
No other nation In the world has such a disgraceful 
record. Lynching is never practiced in Europe. It 
is unknown in South America, and during more than 
twenty-five years the writer has never known of a 
single case In Asia In the countries where he has 



THE RACE PROBLEM 167 

worked, in India, China or Japan. Even a Turkish 
Ambassador became persona non grata to our gov- 
ernment for calling attention to the moral incon- 
sistency of the United States in denouncing the out- 
rages perpetrated by the Turks on the Armenians 
while such outrages are habitual in America under 
our system of lynching. 

America is held up to scorn in the press both of 
Europe and Asia as the one country that condones 
this barbarous, inhuman and unchristian practice. 
This is a serious hindrance to the work of Christian 
missions in China, India and other lands. It is con- 
stantly thrown in the teeth of our missionaries. Our 
country cannot remain half lawless and half law abid- 
ing any more than half slave and half free. If 
respect for law is habitually broken down by the 
practice of lynching, it inevitably undermines our 
moral fibre. Every time a Negro is lynched or 
burned at the stake the public participates through 
the press. A minister of the Southern Methodist 
Church recently said that in some districts all the 
cases of mob violence were Methodist or Baptist 
lynchings, the majority of the mob being Protestant 
church members. A Presbyterian elder called this 
minister aside and said that they had settled the 
race problem in their district. He said, ''every little 
while we just take out a few niggers and lynch them." 
This would be unthinkable and unbelievable in any 
country but America. How long is this blot to con- 
tinue in our national life? It will continue as long 
as we make an idle or hollow profession of religion 
and refuse to apply our Christianity to our treat- 



168 FACING THE CRISIS 

ment of other races, classes and nations In the prac- 
tice of brotherhood. 

We are glad to note that the leading women in 
the churches of Georgia and other states in the 
Inter-Racial Committees have spoken out against 
this disgraceful practice.^ Governor Dorsey of 
Georgia In the pamphlet publishing his address of 
April 22, 192 1, protested against the four wrongs to 
which the Negro Is subjected in his state, namely 
lynching, peonage, driving the Negro out by organ- 
ized lawlessness, especially of the Ku Klux Klan, 
and subjecting him to acts of cruelty and injustice. 

We are glad to note that a new conscience Is be- 
ing created and that invaluable work has been done 
by the Inter-Racial Committees which have now 
been organized In more than six hundred of the 
seven hundred and fifty-nine counties where Negroes 
are found In large numbers. We are facing a new 
world since the war. A new spirit is abroad. Quite 
apart from America, there is a new race conscious- 
ness observable over most of the world. Every 
race is demanding Its equal and rightful place in the 
brotherhood of man. This spirit is spreading across 
Asia. It Is permeating Africa. The awakening 
aspirations of the two-thirds of humanity that are 
colored people can be realized if we read carefully 

* "We find in our hearts no extenuation for crime, be it viola- 
tion of womanhood, mob-violence, or the illegal taking of human 
life. We are convinced that if there is any crime more dangerous 
than another, it is that which strikes at the root of and under- 
mines constituted authority, breaks all laws and restraints of 
civilization, substitutes mob-violence and masked irresponsibility 
for established justice, and deprives society of a sense of pro- 
tection against barbarism." 



THE RACE PROBLEM 169 

the statement made at the Pan-African Conference 
in London : ^ 

For a solution of the race problem we can only 
turn to a real application of the principles of Jesus 
to all men alike, in the recognition of the infinite 
worth of every man before God, whether white or 
black, brown or yellow; in the brotherhood of all 
men before God as Father, and in the law of love 
expressed in service for all. 

*"The absolute equality of races, physical, political and social, 
is the founding stone of World Peace and human advancement. 
No one denies great differences of gift, capacity and attainment 
among individuals of all races, but the voice of Science and Re- 
ligion and practical Politics is one in denying the God-appointed 
existence of super-races or of races naturally and inevitably and 
eternally inferior. 

"Of all the various criteria by which masses of men have in 
the past been judged and classified that of the color of the skin 
and texture of the hair is surely the most adventitious and 
idiotic. . . . The insidious and dishonorable propaganda which 
for selfish ends so distorts and denies facts as to represent the 
advancement and development of certain races of men as impos- 
sible and undesirable should be met v^ith widespread dissemina- 
tion of the truth. . . . 

"The demand for the interpenetration of countries and inter- 
mingling of blood has come in modern days from the white race 
alone and has been imposed on brown and black folks mainly 
by brute force and fraud ; and on top of that the resulting people 
of mixed race have had to bear innuendo, persecution and insult; 
and the penetrated countries have been forced into semi-slavery. 
The Suppressed Races through their thinking intelligentsia are 
demanding: 

1. The recognition of civilized men as civilized despite their 
race or color. 

2. Local self-government for backward groups, deliberately ris- 
ing as experience and knowledge grow to complete self-govern- 
ment under the limitations of a self-governed world. 

3. Education in self knowledge, in scientific truth and in indus- 
trial technique, undivorced from the art of beauty. 

4. Freedom in their own religion and custom and with the right 
to be non-conformist and different. 

5. Cooperation with the rest of the world in government, in- 
dustry and art on the basis of justice, freedom and peace. 

6. The ancient common ownership of the land and its natural 
fruits and defense against the unrestrained greed of invested 
capital." — ^Pan-African Conference, London, 1921. 



170 FACING THE CRISIS 

What would it mean to apply these principles in 
the case of each individual in the Negro race? Let 
us take a single typical case. Here was a little 
Negro boy, Booker Washington. Under the en- 
vironment of slavery he was virtually denied human 
rights. But the boy was given a chance of 
a practical, technical education. The writer stood 
recently on that barren hill at Tuskegee, Alabama, 
where on Independence Day, July 4th, 1881, in a 
little log cabin and an old church Booker Washing- 
ton opened his school with thirty pupils. He saw 
there today nearly 2000 students being trained in 
more than a score of useful industries, where the 
pupils "learn by doing," and where men from Ox- 
ford and Cambridge and the continent of Europe 
come to study this remarkable system of educa- 
tion. 

The writer stood before the grave of Booker 
Washington beside Professor Carver, the great 
Negro chemist. Booker Washington found him as 
a promising boy and set him to work upon that bar- 
ren hill. It contained nothing but sand and clay. 
Taking that sand, Professor Carver has developed 
some eighty-five chemical and commercial products 
out of it: from the clay he has discovered more than 
two hundred. The thin soil purchased at fifty cents 
an acre would produce at first only peanuts and sweet 
potatoes. Out of the former Professor Carver has 
made over a hundred products, and from the sweet 
potato one hundred and twelve, several of which 
have great commercial and financial possibilities. 



THE RACE PROBLEM 171 

Booker Washington and Professor Carver found 
more on that old barren hill bought for 
half a dollar an acre, than others had ever 
dreamed. 

There stands today the great model farm and the 
splendid institution of Tuskegee with its plant and 
endowment worth more than five million dollars. 
But just as there was something more in that old 
barren hill than men had ever dreamed, so there 
were undreamed latent possibilities in that little Ne- 
gro boy Booker Washington and that young stu- 
dent Carver, and in every Negro boy in Tuskegee 
today or out of it. Following the first Negro scien- 
tist, Benjamin Banneker of Maryland, who in 1770 
constructed the first clock striking the hours that was 
made in America, Professor Carver has shown some 
of the latent capacities of his race. Already in spite 
of their unjust and terrific handicaps, more than one 
thousand patents have been granted to Negroes. 
Largely as the result of their own efforts, in coop- 
eration with Christian white men who really believe 
In brotherhood, the Negro in a little over half a 
century since his release from slavery has made re- 
markable progress. He has increased his homes 
owned from 12,000 to 650,000, his farms operated 
from 20,000 to 1,000,000, his business enterprises 
successfully conducted from 2000 to 165,000, his 
literacy from 10 per cent to 80 per cent, the number 
of teachers from 600 to 43,000, voluntary gifts for 
the education of Negroes from $80,000 to $2,700,- 
000, his churches from 700 to 45,000, and the value 



172 FACING THE CRISIS 

of his church property from $1,500,000 to $90,- 
000,000.^ 

It is our belief that only as we persistently apply 
and practice the principles, of Jesus mentioned 
above, can we truly face the crisis of the race prob- 
lem in America and solve it.^ 

^Dr. Anson Phelps Stokes* Hampton Institute Founders' Day 
Address. 

^ For further information upon the problem of race relations see 
"Present Forces in Negro Progress," Weatherford ; "The Negro 
Faces America," J. Seligman; "The Souls of Black Folk," Dr. 
W. E. B. DuBois; "A Short History of the American Negro," 
Benjamin G. Brawley; "A Social History of the American Negro," 
Benjamin G. Brawley; "The Negro in Literature and Art," 
Benjamin G. Brawley; "The Trend of the Races," George E. 
Haynes, Missionary Education Movement, 1922; "Up From Slav- 
ery," Booker T. Washington; "Finding a V^ay Out," Major R. R. 
Moton; "A History of the Negro Church," Carter G. Woodson; 
"The Basis of Ascendency," E. G. Murphy; "Black and White," 
L. H. Hammond; The Journal of Negro History, a quarterly, 1218 
U Street, Washington, D. C. 



XIV 

THE ETHICS OF WAR 

In our international relations what should be 
our attitude to war? Is war ever justifiable? 
Facing the crisis in our international affairs how 
can we put an end to it? 

Christ calls his followers to act always and only 
from the motive of love, or indomitable goodwill 
to friend and *'enemy" alike. But this very motive 
constraining us to seek the welfare of all equally, 
would seem to demand that the criminal and maniac 
individual or nation must be restrained, both in the 
interests of society and of themselves. This In- 
volves the use of an adequate police force. I believe 
in the use of force only up to the point where moral 
suasion becomes operative. The organized use of 
force by the community will be necessitated as long 
as its indiscriminate use by lawless Individuals or 
nations continues. As Admiral Mahan says: *'The 
function of force is to give moral ideas time to 
work." Ideally, the purpose of a police force is 
not to destroy but to protect; it is not punitive but 
redemptive ; not destructive but constructive ; not for 
conquest but for preservation. It differs radi- 
cally from an army of conquest. 

Such a police force might be used not only locally, 
but nationally and internationally. For illustra- 

173 



174 FACING THE CRISIS 

tion, if trouble arises in Mexico and lawlessness 
threatens international relationships, the right solu- 
tion would seem to be, not a national army invading 
for selfish conquest, nor intervention by a power- 
ful neighbor at the instance of financial interests, 
with no concern for the men sacrificed in the invad- 
ing army or in Mexico itself, but an international 
police force under judicial sanction, to restore order 
for the welfare both of the people of Mexico and 
of the world. Or again, if Villa comes across the 
Mexican Border to invade America, we believe he 
should be met by a sufficient police force to restrain 
his invading army and protect the invaded country. 
The same would be true in case of continued mas- 
sacre of Armenians by the Turks. But the action of 
such a police force under judicial sanction must be 
distinguished from war. 

As a means of settling international differences, I 
believe that modern warfare is wrong, for the fol- 
lowing reasons: 

1. War involves the inevitable wholesale destruc- 
tion of human life, the most priceless thing in the 
world. Ten millions of the flower of the world's 
youth lie buried on the battlefields of Europe, after 
the gigantic destruction of humanity in the World 
War. 

2. Modern war involves the inevitable wholesale 
destruction of non-combatants and havoc wrought 
upon whole populations. It is not professional sol- 
diers but whole peoples who are now in conflict. 
Thirty million non-combatants have already been 
killed by those ^vg camp-followers of the war — 



THE ETHICS OF WAR 175 

further wars, revolution, hunger, famine, and dis- 
ease. This ''war that was to end war" left a score 
of smaller ones In Its train. The habit of killing 
and reliance upon force led on to revolution. Hun- 
ger, under-nourishment, and widespread infant mor- 
tality have carried away multitudes. 

Famine also follows in the wake of war. The 
Russian famine, aggravated by the breakdown of 
the transport and the lack of supplies owing to the 
war, has caused the death of millions. Disease 
stalks behind famine and war. Typhus swept away 
two hundred and fifty thousand In Poland alone. 
Tuberculosis has multiplied. Pneumonia, Influenza, 
and other war scourges have swept around the 
world. 

3. War involves enormous material loss, the 
waste and destruction of wealth, and leaves a stag- 
gering burden of debt upon future generations. The 
direct cost of the Great War is estimated to have 
been 186 billions of dollars, or seven times that of 
all wars from the French Revolution to the present 
time combined. It has impoverished the world and 
left us facing a financial and political crisis. The 
total debts of the world were multiplied nearly ten- 
fold. War not only leaves a burden of debt for the 
past, but mortgages the future in the ever-Increasing 
race for armaments. 

4. War Inevitably engenders hatred, cruelty, re- 
prisals, atrocities and counter-atrocities on both 
sides. We have called forth the demon of hate, but 
vvx cannot now exorcise and expel It. A campaign to 
create fear, appealing to race and national pride. 



176 FACING THE CRISIS 

calls out the worst traits of human nature. This 
hatred, suspicion and division does not cease with 
the war. It has led almost to the economic break- 
down of Europe and much of the world. The war 
well-nigh shattered the cooperative processes upon 
which modern civilization depends. And war is be- 
coming ever more destructive and barbarous.^ 
Worse than the material destruction was the moral 
deterioration that followed the war. A moral 
slump, a tide of materialism, of ^'neopaganism," of 
cynicism and of crime came in its wake. The world 
IS on a lower moral plane since the war. Added to 
this is the fact that war is well-nigh futile as a means 
of solving problems. At best it sows dragons' teeth, 
raising new problems for every one that it settles. 
5. The propaganda of modern warfare Inevi- 
tably victimizes the people on both sides, leads to 
loss of truth and to the demoralization of both vic- 
tor and vanquished alike. In order to arouse whole 
masses of the people to the fury of going out and 
killing millions of their fellowmen, every generous 

^The reality of war is thus pictured by a young officer: "It is 
hideously exasperating to hear people talking the glib common- 
places about the war and distributing cheap sympathy to its vic- 
tims. Perhaps you are tempted to give them a picture of a 
leprous earth, scattered with the swollen and blackening corpses 
of hundreds of young men. The appalling stench of rotting 
carrion, mingled with the sickening smell of exploded lyddite and 
ammonal. Mud like porridge, trenches like shallow and sloping 
cracks in the porridge — porridge that stinks in the sun. Swarms 
of flies and blue-bottles clustering on pits of offal. W^ounded men 
lying in the shell holes among the decaying corpses, helpless 
under the scorching sun and bitter nights, under repeated shelling. 
Men with bowels dropping out, lungs shot away, with blinded, 
smashed faces, or limbs blown into space. Men screaming and 
gibbering. Wounded men hanging in agony on the barbed wire 
until a friendly spout of liquid fire shrivels them up like a fly 
in the candle.'* 



THE ETHICS OF WAR 177 

trait or favorable fact about the foe must be sup- 
pressed. We must be told an unbroken stream of 
enemy atrocities; every unfavorable fact about our- 
selves and our allies must be silenced. We do not 
desire to minimize the terrible responsibility of 
Prussian militarism for all its atrocities, yet we 
maintain that if we are told the truth, the whole 
truth and nothing but the truth, the common people 
will never go out to murder each other. For illus- 
tration, we lashed ourselves to fury by telling each 
other that "the Huns are baby-killers." We told 
ourselves that we would never do that. Our bombs 
dropped on civil populations would never kill babies. 
Our gas would never harm women and children. Our 
hunger blockade would never touch a child. Yet 
what were the facts? Our successful Allied hunger 
blockade was killing a hundred thousand women and 
children and old men a year in Germany alone. Our 
hunger blockade killed many times more babies than 
all the cruelties in Belgium, and all the victims of 
the submarine. 

6. Modern warfare Is Inhuman and unchristian. 
Jesus taught a new way of life founded upon the 
law of love. He calls us all to follow this way. 
He does not bid us do the things he would not do 
himself. In the light of his teaching a generation 
ago we challenged slavery and abolished it. The 
time has come for us to outlaw and abolish war, 
just as we did the holding of slaves, the fighting of 
duels, the torture of heretics, the burning of witches 
and a score of other superstitions and evils from 
which we have been emancipated. 



178 FACING THE CRISIS 

Whether we are pacifists or not there is need of 
a Christian conscience and a common mind for the 
abolition of war. How long is the church to con- 
demn war in general and then advocate each war 
in particular? Are our churches again to be stam- 
peded and turned into recruiting stations? The 
time has come for the Christians of all nations to 
say "No more war." For, as General Bliss says, "If 
another war like the last one should come, the pro- 
fessing Christians will be responsible for every drop 
of blood that will be shed." ^ 

Ten millions killed, thirty millions of non-com- 
batants slain, a decreased birth rate of forty millions 
more, the world impoverished by debt, staggering 
under an impossible load of armaments, demoralized 
by falsehood and propaganda, degraded by hatred, 
and drifting again toward war! Are we to destroy 
war, or let it destroy us ? Are we courageously fac- 
ing the crisis in the world today with regard to the 
ethics of war? As Emerson well said, "Now is 
the nick of time in matters that reach into eternity." 

^ Mr. Lecky tells us that "Not only has ecclesiastical influence 
had no appreciable influence in diminishing the number of wars, 
but that it has actually and very seriously increased it. With the 
exception of Mohammedanism, no other religion has done so 
much to produce war as was done by the religious teachers of 
Christendom during several centuries." Quoted from "The Sword 
and the Cross," by Kirby Page, which see for "An Examination 
of War in the Light of Jesus' Way of Life." 



XV 

INDUSTRIAL UNREST 

What are the causes of the present industrial 
unrest and what is the cure? 

The writer found Industrial unrest In almost 
every country that he visited since the war, but he 
returned to America to find over three thousand 
strikes a year for the last five years, some ^yq times 
as many as In Great Britain and far more than in 
any other country In the world. When we Inquire 
as to the reason for this world-wide discontent, Mr. 
G. D. H. Cole of Oxford states that In Great Brit- 
ain there are three underlying causes: Insecurity of 
employment, growing discontent to work for the 
private profit and luxury of the few rather than for 
the service and need of the many, and labor's re- 
sentment at the autocratic control of Industry. The 
employee Is too often treated as a commodity, re- 
ceiving orders from an employer who controls him 
but gives him no voice In determining the conditions 
of his working life. 

If we ask the cause of unrest in our own country, 
we may turn for an official answer to the Final Re- 
port of the Commission on Industrial Relations, 
where the causes of industrial strife are thus stated: 
*'The sources from which this unrest springs group 

179 



180 FACING THE CRISIS 

themselves almost without exception under four 
main sources which include all the others: 

1. Unjust distribution of wealth and Income. 

2. Unemployment and denial of an opportunity 
to earn a living. 

3. Denial of justice In the creation, adjudication 
and in the administration of law. 

4. Denial of the right and opportunity to form 
effective organizations." ^ 

If these truly represent the attitude of labor we 
are indeed facing a crisis In our Industrial life. Grow- 
ing out of the last mentioned cause, or the denial 
of labor's right to form effective organizations, we 
find the menace of the labor spy system, stretching 
out its slimy octopus tentacles through much of 
American Industry. The second volume of the In- 
ter-church Report, 'Tublic Opinion and the Steel 
Strike," speaks of the "widespread systems of es- 
pionage as an Integral part of the antiunion policy 
of great Industrial corporations." In Its Investiga- 
tion the Commislon found "war periodically overt, 
generally chronic in the steel Industry." In one 
typical company which they Investigated they found 
in the files some six hundred reports by labor spies 
together with black lists of union men, contracts with 
labor detective agencies, and a whole elaborate spy 
system for preventing union men from working In 
their employ. Dr. Richard C. Cabot, Professor of 
Social Ethics at Harvard, shows that this spy sys- 
tem promotes perpetual suspicion among the work- 
ing men and "a very widespread human tendency 
* Reprint from Senate Document 415, p. 3a 



INDUSTRIAL UNREST 181 

to go back to barbaric methods of deception and 
treachery and to break down the distinction between 
war, which we know is hell, and peace, which we 
have supposed to be something different." 

This system of industrial espionage was long ago 
abandoned in Great Britain in favor of more en- 
lightened methods though it was practiced there a 
century ago. Hammond in the *'Town Laborer" 
shows that between 1800 and 1820 in England *'the 
use of spies was common in all times of upper class 
panic." ^ 

What we need in America in facing the crisis 
of the present is the establishment of a recognized 
constitutionalism In Industry, not a warfare with in- 
dustrial spies but a frank recognition of the equal 
right to organize on the part of employer and em- 
ployee alike. Thus in the clothing industry, in the 
successful operation of the agreement with the Amal- 
gamated, instead of the old system of war and spies, 
there is a written constitution providing for execu- 
tive, legislative and judicial functions, fulfilled in 
mutual good will for the common benefit of the em- 
ployers, the employees and the community. 

Let us now consider, however, the first and last 
of the four causes of Industrial unrest which are 
the most serious. The first is the unequal distribu- 
tion of wealth and income In the United States. 

^"The Town Laborer," p. 258. 



XVI 

WEALTH AND POVERTY 

Is the present inequality just, iviih its vast con- 
centration of wealth and power at one end of the 
scale and of poverty and helplessness at the otherf 

Are we not witnessing in America the most rapid 
and dangerous concentration of wealth in the hands 
of a few, and of the power of control over other 
lives which wealth brings, that history has ever 
known? Professor Sims states that a hundred and 
eighty men possess one-quarter of the wealth of 
America.* One corporation monopolizes a large 
part of the steel production and of the lake ores of 
America. Another has control of a large propor- 
tion of the illuminating oil. Three companies own 
most of the telegraph and telephone lines. Five 
packers have controlled a large proportion of the 
meat industry. Eight railway groups control two- 
thirds of the mileage of our railroads, while twenty- 
five men link together 99 railway companies, operat- 
ing 211,280 miles or 82 per cent of the country^s 
steam transportation system.^ Two hundred men 

* Newell L. Sims, "Ultimate Democracy," p. 52. 

^Congressional Record, March 14, 1921, Vol. 60, No. 80, p. 
4780-89. According to the Congressional Record, out of 600,000 
stockholders in the first class railways, the majority of the stock 
is held by less than 20 of the big stockholders of each road. Less 
than 1.3 per cent of the stockholders of class i roads control the 
stock. However "the real power which today controls the rail- 

182 



WEALTH AND POVERTY 183 

have most of the privately owned timber of Amer- 
ica, while three companies control a large part 
of this timber.^ Thirteen water companies are said 
to control about a third of the developed water 
power of America.^ And so we may go through the 
long list of corporations and monopolies. Mr. H. 
H. Klein In his "Dynastic America" gives the names 
of about one hundred families who now control the 
railways and the fourteen basic Industries of the 
country. The future welfare of the world will be 
determined by the contest for power. The power 
of the vote Is In the hands of the many, while the 
power of capital Is In the hands of the few and the 
Incongruity constantly grows greater. Are we cou- 
rageously facing the crisis occasioned by these condi- 
tions or drifting blindly Into the future unmindful 
of the lesson of history? 

According to Professor W. I. King of the Uni- 
versity of Wisconsin, approximately two per cent 
of the people possess some sixty per cent of the 
wealth of the United States, while at the bottom 
of the scale sixty-five per cent, or the majority of 
the people, possess only five per cent of the wealth, 
i. e., two million people possess more than the re- 
maining one hundred and more millions all com- 
bined.^ Some have the share of a thousand, some 
of a million, and some of more than two millions of 

roads of the United States is the group of a dozen financial insti- 
tutions which make up the New York banking combine. Members 
of the Boards of Directors of these banks control 270 directorships 
of 93 class I railroads." 

^ C. R. Van Hise, "Concentration and Control," p. 156. 

*Ibid., p. 160. 

^"Wealth and Income," pp. 80, 82. 



184 FACING THE CRISIS 

the less favored. Of the .national income approxi- 
mately forty-six per cent goes to wages and fifty- 
three per cent to profit, interest, and rent. Justice 
Brandeis reminds us that the Pujo Commission of 
Congress found that one great financial group was 
controlling 341 directorates on 112 corporations, 
with a capital of some $22,000,000,000.^ That 
would be twice the value of the property of the thir- 
teen southern states all combined, and more than the 
value of the property of the twenty-two states west 
of the Mississippi. On the other hand only fifteen 
per cent of the people own any securities whatever 
in America. Only about three per cent own enough 
to pay any income tax. Less than a million and a 
half pay an income tax on $3000 or more annu- 
ally.2 

Turn now from this vast concentration of wealth 
in the hands of a few, to the poverty of the many 
at the other end of the scale. Over seven hundred 
thousand are injured in industry in America every 
year, much of which is preventable.^ Some two mil- 
lions are unemployed from four to six months of 
each year. Ten millions or one-fourth of our popu- 
lation are in poverty in normal times."* Ten mil- 
lions who are now living will die prematurely of 
preventable diseases at the present death rate, and 
the death rate of the poor is three times as great 

* Quoted in L. D. Edie current "Social and Industrial Forces," p. 
125. 

The number in 1918 was 1,411,298.— See U. S. Internal Revenue 
— Statistics of Income, Preliminary Report. 

^ "Final Report Commission on Industrial Relations," pp. 24-37. 

* See the estimates of Russell Sage Foundation, Robert Hunter, 
Prof. Parmelee, and J. S. Penman. 



WEALTH AND POVERTY 185 

as that of the well-to-do.^ It Is estimated that 
there are 1,750,000 children at work who ought to 
be in school. One-third of the mothers of labor are 
forced to toil to help support the family. In the 
sphere of education only one boy in three is able to 
graduate from a grammar school, one in ten from 
high school, and one in a thousand from a first- 
class university.^ In the religious sphere 26,000,000 
youths are growing up without religious education 
in the home, in the Sunday School, or in the Church; 
and 56,000,000 persons are outside all the churches, 
Catholic or Protestant. 

As in Britain and Europe, so in America, approxi- 
mately one-tenth of the people possess almost nine- 
tenths of the wealth, and at the bottom of the scale 
nine-tenths of the population possess the remaining 
one-tenth. The vast majority are born without land, 
without a home of their own, without tools, or means 
of livelihood, save as they depend without security 
upon casual employment at the mercy of our present 
unequal and unjust industrial system. During the 
last twenty-five years the large estates of over a 
thousand acres have increased from thirty thousand 
to more than fifty thousand in number, while the 
number of tenant farmers is steadily increasing. As 
the Roman historian wrote, "The great estates have 
ruined Rome." Is it any wonder that such condi- 
tions are a cause of industrial unrest? ^ Are we to 

* Commission on Industrial Relations, pp. 24-37. 

* Commission on Industrial Relations, p. 23. 

'Think of the responsibility of growing rich in a poor world. 
The inequality in America is shown in "Income in the United 
States" by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Twenty- 
one million families dividing the available income of the country 



186 FACING THE CRISIS 

accept them as inevitable or permanent? Are we 
facing the crisis? 

Let us next consider the final cause of industrial 
unrest, the ^'denial of the right and opportunity to 
form effective organizations." 

would average $2,330 each. But in actual fact 152 persons have 
an income of over $1,000,000; 369 persons an income of from 
$500,000 to $1,000,000; 1976 from $200,000 to $500,000; 4,945 from 
$100,000 to $200,000; and a total of 254,000 of the rich with 
incomes of $10,000 to over $1,000,000, receive nearly seven billion 
dollars of the national income. Only 842,000, or 3 per cent, 
receive over $5,000 a year; five millions, or 14 per cent, receive 
over $2,000; twenty-seven millions, or 72 per cent of the workers, 
receive less than $1,500, and fourteen million persons, or 38 per 
cent, receive less than $1,000 a year. To prevent such unjust 
distribution of wealth the Italian economist Rignano, after allow- 
ing a reasonable limit for private fortunes, proposes to make the 
State co-heir with all private beneficiaries. Upon the first descent 
the State would take a third, from the second generation two-thirds 
and from the third descent the remainder above the fixed limit. 



XVII 

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING 

What should be our attitude toward labor 
unions and to labor s claim to the right of col- 
lective bargaining'? 

By collective bargaining we mean the right of 
labor to organize for its own protection and welfare 
and to choose its own representatives for industrial 
conference without restriction. This implies the 
right to organize labor unions whose representatives 
shall be recognized by employers. Is this claim on 
the part of the workers just? Are we facing the 
crisis in the world of labor today? 

For more than five thousand years man has been 
struggling upward toward freedom. The liberty 
of Greece and of the young republic of Rome was 
gained by collective action. The Magna Carta of 
Anglo-Saxon liberties was wrested from autocracy 
by collective bargaining at Runnymede. The free- 
dom of the American Colonies and of the Republic 
of France in the French Revolution was won by 
united action under their own chosen representatives. 
Indeed, history as a whole shows that each nation 
and each class has had to win Its own liberties and 
rights by collective action. They have not been 
gratuitously granted by the privileged party in 
power. 

187 



188 FACING THE CRISIS 

In the industrial sphere the method of advance 
has been the same. The working class has slowly 
risen through long centuries of struggle. Under 
the institution of slavery the worker was often the 
property of the employer. Under serfdom he was 
sold with the land. With the introduction of the 
factory system, the laborer's condition was still piti- 
able. He was forced to toil twelve and even fifteen 
hours a day on low wages, while multitudes of 
women and children were working in dark mines and 
unsanitary factories. The working class was denied 
the right of suffrage politically and of organizing 
industrially. Labor unions were long prohibited 
and labor as a commodity was at the mercy of the 
employer. 

Though their political liberty dates from the 
Magna Carta in the eleventh century, for the last 
two hundred and seventy years labor in Great Brit- 
ain has been struggling toward industrial freedom 
and democracy. Over a hundred years ago the em- 
ployers of England tried to destroy trade unions. 
Under the Combination Acts of 1800, working men 
who attended any meeting for the purpose of short- 
ening their long hours or raising their scanty wages 
could be imprisoned.^ 

In England, Germany and over most of the con- 

* In 1786, shortly after the American War of Independence, five 
London bookbinders were sentenced to two years in prison for 
refusing to work a twelve-hour day and leading a strike to reduce 
their hours from twelve to eleven. In 1834 five laborers of Dor- 
chester with two itinerant preachers were transported for seven 
years for merely administering an oath of loyalty to members of 
"The Friendly Society of Agricultural Laborers." — Webb, "History 
of Trades Unions," pp. 146, 70. 



COLLECTIVE BARGAINING 189 

tincnt of Europe collective bargaining Is now recog- 
nized as the legal and moral right of the workers. 
In Germany the workers are legally protected by an 
eight hour day and democratic shop committees are 
required in every factory. 

No one who studies the history of American or 
British labor can fail to observe their advance in 
improved conditions through their own organized 
efforts.^ A fair-minded student can hardly deny the 
continued need of labor to organize. More than 
half of the people of the world are still underfed. 
The vast majority of workers are living without a 
home of their own, without land, tools, or any 
means of livelihood save the casual job, and with- 
out security of life or of employment. The Indi- 
vidual workman Is helpless against the collective 
power of a huge corporation backed by Its vast 
aggregation of capital and linked with the organized 
financial and industrial power of the employers of 
the country. 

The advantages of collective bargaining to the 
worker cannot be denied. It aims at industrial de- 
mocracy and claims the right of a voice in deter- 
mining the condition under which labor shall work. 
It has resulted in the gradual increase of wages, the 

*In December, 1920, Samuel Gompers wrote: "There are 
5,500,000 organized workers in the United States. The American 
Federation of Labor has a membership of 4,500,000. The railroad 
brotherhoods have a membership of over 500,000. There are 
about 8,000,000 wage earners in the United States eligible to 
membership in trade unions. Nearly 65 per cent are organized. 
The 5,500,000 organized workers represent 27,500,000 people or 
about 25 per cent of the population of the United States." Bemaa 
"The Closed Shop," p. 3. 



190 FACING THE CRISIS 

shortening of hours of the working day from twelve 
and fifteen down to an eight-hour day. 

We recognize the misguided policy of some labor 
leaders, but to seek to abolish the unions because of 
their shortcomings would be as futile and as fatal 
as attempting to abolish government because of its 
many failures. Labor has no right to injure society 
in general in order to help its own interests in par- 
ticular. Labor, like capital, must be held respon- 
sible to society as a whole. The professional agi- 
tator and walking delegate, who has little interest 
or responsibility in the common enterprise of labor 
and capital in an individual industrial concern, may 
stir up trouble and make decisions detrimental to 
the best interests not only of the community as a 
whole but even of labor itself. The right of organi- 
zation, however, is a fundamental human demand 
which cannot be permanently denied. Indeed or- 
ganization is the inevitable outcome of the develop- 
ment of industry itself. In its very nature it is 
cooperative and must become increasingly so as it 
advances in efficiency. No laws, no compulsion, no 
human efforts can in the end prevent the collective 
organization of men either in corporations pi capi- 
tal on the one hand or in unions of labor on the 
other. The right of collective bargaining is inher- 
ent in the evolutionary development of human society 
and industry. 

This right is becoming increasingly and widely 
recognized.^ The leading religious bodies of the 

* See the Social Ideals of the Churches, Appendix II. Ex-Presi- 
dent Taft says: "The principle of combination among workmen 



COLLECTIVE BARGAINING 191 

United States recognize this right. "The Social 
Ideals of the Churches" adopted by the Federal 
Council of the Churches of Christ In America, the 
National Catholic War Council, and the Social Jus- 
tice Program adopted by the Central Conference of 
American Rabbis recognize the right of labor to 
organize and to bargain collectively through repre- 
sentatives of its own choosing. 

is indispensable to their welfare and their protection against the 
tyranny of employers." Mr. Herbert Hoover, Secretary Hughes, 
Mr. Roosevelt and a long list of leading authorities might be 
quoted as vindicating this right of labor. The report of the 
President's Second Industrial Conference, the Final Report of the 
Federal Commission on Industrial Relations, that of the United 
States Senate Committee on the Steel Strike and the United States 
War Labor Board, all indorse the principle of collective bargain- 
ing. See pamphlet "Collective Bargaining," by Kirby Page, for 
fuller treatment of this subject. 



XVIII 

THE OPEN OR CLOSED SHOP 

What is the nature of the "open shop'* drwt 
and what should be our attitude toward it? 

The terms **open" an3 *'closed'^ shop arc In» 
definite and misleading. For fairness and clearness 
we should follow the Federal Commission on In- 
dustrial Relations and use the terms "union" and 
"non-union" shop.^ 

During the period of financial depression and 
widespread unemployment when labor organization 
had been weakened after the war, the country wit- 
nessed a nation-wide open shop campaign under the 
banner of "patriotism and true Americanism." No 
doubt many employers have been engaged in the 
movement with honest motives in an effort to pre- 

^"The Commission on Industrial Relations will not use the terms 
*open shop' and 'closed shop,' but in lieu thereof will use 'union 
shop' and 'non-union shop/ The union shop is a shop where the 
wages, the hours of labor, and the general conditions of employ- 
ment are fixed by a joint agreement between the employer and 
trade union. The non-union shop is one where no joint agreement 
exists, and where the wages, the hours of labor, and the general 
conditions of employment are fixed by the employer without co- 
operation with any trade union." — Final Report, p. 265. The New 
Jersey Chamber of Commerce has listed nine varieties of open 
and closed shops as follows: (i) closed anti-union shop, (2) 
preferential anti-union shop, (3) open non-union shop without 
shop committee, (4) open non-union shop with shop committee, 
(5) open indirect union shop, (6) open union shop, {7) preferen- 
tial union shop, (8) closed union shop of an open union, (9) 
closed union shop of a closed union. 

192 



THE OPEN OR CLOSED SHOP 193 

vent what they regarded as the tyranny of labor. 
Others, however, have taken advantage of the op- 
portunity during the relative helplessness of the 
workers to endeavor to break the unions. The bet- 
ter class of employers recognize that this may have 
serious consequences, and that we are facing a crisis 
in the relation of capital and labor today. 

We would gladly recognize the earnest efforts of 
many employers to find a just solution of the labor 
problem. The New Jersey State Chamber of Com- 
merce, in a report made public January 31, 1922, 
advises employers to keep clear of the various "open 
shop" movements. The report shows that there 
are three roads open to employers; the road of con- 
structive achievement within the shop, that of con- 
structive cooperation between organizations of em- 
ployers and of workers and that of the "open shop." 
This last, the committee says, is "undermining the 
confidence of labor in employers, and ruining the 
foundation of cooperation between them." It is 
pointed out that similar campaigns in former periods 
of depression have only resulted in the redoubled 
growth of unionism and adoption of extreme meas- 
ures in the periods of prosperity which followed. 
The various religious bodies of the United States 
have also condemned the open shop compaign.^ 

^The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America 
declares that: "A shop of this kind is not an open shop but a 
closed shop — closed against members of labor unions." The Na- 
tional Catholic Welfare Council boldly says: "The 'open shop* 
drive masks under such names as 'The American Plan' and hides 
behind the pretense of American freedom. Yet its real purpose 
is to destroy all effective labor unions, and thus subject the work- 
ing people to the complete domination of the employers." Quoted 
in "The Open Shop Drive," pp. 45, 46. 



194 FACING THE CRISIS 

We should frankly recognize the evils which are 
sometimes incident to a closed union shop. Under 
the misguided direction of some labor leaders such 
a closed shop Is sometimes used as a means of un- 
justifiable despotism and tyranny both over the em- 
ployer and over non-union working men. When 
unions limit output, teach men to *'slack on the job," 
assume a dictatorship and by their arbitrary limita- 
tion Increase the cost of production, they lose the 
backing of public opinion and ruin their own cause. 

It may be asked upon what basis the worker justi- 
fies a union shop. He would probably reply some- 
what as follows: "A shop with union and non-union 
men half organized Is unstable like a house divided 
against Itself. There Is a constant attempt on the 
one side to organize It entirely and on the other to 
disorganize it. 

"As Lincoln said: *ThIs country cannot remain 
half slave and half free,' so the unions have found 
that industry cannot remain half organized and half 
unorganized. There must either be a non-union 
shop under the paternal control of the employer or 
a union shop organized on the basis of industrial 
democracy, where both employer and employees 
shall share In determining conditions under which 
the men shall work. 

"The non-unionist In times of unemployment 
would lower wages and undercut the standard of the 
union men. He shares all the advantages gained 
by the union in better wages, hours and conditions 
of employment without sharing the responsibility 
for paying his dues. It is like a citizen who seeks 



THE OPEN OR CLOSED SHOP 195 

to escape paying his taxes. Just as the community 
uses coercion in the payment of taxes for the wel- 
fare of all, so does the trade union. Government 
itself is a closed shop where the majority rules and 
coerces the minority. Democracy is majority rule. 
Labor believes in government and industrial democ- 
racy. The local shop is a sphere of government, a 
democratic unit. 

''The employers were the first to organize and 
act collectively in corporations and trusts and un- 
organized individual workers are helpless before 
them. They themselves require that every stock- 
holder must pay his share and if he is to vote he 
must have at least one share of stock. Just so the 
unions demand that members shall carry their share 
of the responsibility and to vote must pay their 
dues. By what right can the employers claim the 
right of collective bargaining, in choosing their own 
representatives where they will, while they deny 
this equal right to labor, which is in the vast ma- 
jority and needs it so much more? The employers 
have an overwhelming concentration of capital, 
credit, money-power, law-making power, education, 
privilege, organization. We have nothing but our 
humanity. Unorganized we must accept their terms 
or starve. Organized we may meet as two equal 
parties in a constitutionalized industry and secure a 
square deal. By what law, moral or legal, can the 
right to organize be denied to us? Just as profes- 
sional men debar other members of their profession 
for unprofessional conduct and maintain their stand- 
ards, so labor claims the same privilege. Society 



196 FACING THE CRISIS 

counts that to be right which most benefits the whole 
community. So the union claims the right to insist 
on those conditions which are necessary for the wel- 
fare of labor and of the community as a whole. As 
the worker owes a duty to society, so does he to his 
class. He has no right to seek his own selfish gain 
at the expense of the welfare of all the workers 
who are utterly helpless unless they stand together." 
The final test of the organized or unorganized 
shop is that of experience. Professor John R. Com- 
mons of the University of Wisconsin, out of his own 
experience as a worker, contrasts the conditions of 
the printing trade under the union shop with those 
of the steel industry under the "open shop." "Back 
of the demand for the closed shop there are thirty 
or forty years of history. The workingman knows 
what his condition was prior to the closed shop. 
. . . Thirty-five years ago I worked as a typeset- 
ter. . . . Twelve hours a day for fifteen to twenty 
dollars a week — this was the prevailing wage for 
printers. . . . The introduction of the eight-hour 
day Instead of the twelve-hour day, the Increase of 
wages, the prevention of substitution of woman and 
child labor for skilled mechanics; this is what the 
closed shop has done for the printing trade. . . . 
Now compare with this the experience In another 
great Industry. . . . Down to 1892 the iron and 
steel Industry was practically a closed shop industry. 
In 1892 came the great Homestead strike. The iron 
and steel workers' union was defeated. The steel 
companies then adopted the non-union policy and 



THE OPEN OR CLOSED SHOP 197 

with that policy they adopted the twelve-hour day 
and the seven-day week." 

We have heard it said that now is the time to 
break the unions and undoubtedly a time of unem- 
ployment is favorable to this end. We saw the 
Czar try it in Russia and succeed — for a time. But 
after a thousand years of suffering and five cen- 
turies of Czarism, it could not permanently succeed 
even in downtrodden Russia. Bismarck tried to 
break the unions in Germany, but backed by all the 
power of Prussian militarism and all the special 
laws he could pass, he could not succeed. England 
has fought out that battle for nearly three cen- 
turies but labor has finally won the undisputed right 
to organize. Organization is inevitable in every 
department of life, among employers and employees 
alike. We conclude that the "open" non-union shop 
cannot be successfully maintained in Russia, in Ger- 
many, In England or in America. We believe that 
the "open shop" drive is as dangerous as it is im- 
possible of fulfillment, for at the end of the day 
industrial democracy will hold the field. But today 
we are facing the crisis in the issue between the 
closed and the open, the organized and unorganized 
shop in American industry. 



XIX 

THE SOCIAL GOSPEL 

What is the "Social GospeV and what is the 
social function of the Church f 

There is but one gospel, but it has two aspects, 
the Individual and the social, two hemispheres of 
the full-orbed truth, two poles to complete the cir- 
cuit of power. Either taken alone is a maimed 
fragment cut off from the vitality of the living or- 
ganism. Social service that does not contemplate 
the regeneration of the Individual, that would merely 
improve his outward material surroundings would 
be superficial, shallow and Impotent. Likewise, an 
exclusive Individualistic emphasis that would seek to 
save the individual with no reference to his human 
relationships and social obligations Is equally in- 
complete. Thus, it is not enough to save the souls 
of a few slaves while the social evil of slavery Is 
dragging down its millions. We must both save 
the individual slave and abolish the social evil of 
slavery. It is not enough to save a few drunkards 
in the slum missions of the Salvation Army, while 
the evil of drink is ruining multitudes. We must 
save the individual and keep him from drink, but 
we must also abolish the social evil of intemperance 
and keep drink from the man. It is not enough to 

198 



THE SOCIAL GOSPEL 199 

save a few Individual souls in the poverty of the 
city slums. We mush abolish the slum and attack 
the evil of poverty and social injustice. 

The individualist may hold that we are only to 
win men one by one by simple addition, with no so- 
cial obligation to the community; to pluck brands 
from the burning, but not to try to put out the fire 
that is destroying them. But the social gospel holds 
that we must not only relieve poverty and human 
misery but remove their causes; that we must not 
only pluck out individual brands but put out the 
fire that is consuming them; not only reclaim the 
prisoner but make the prison an instrument of so- 
cial redemption. We must not only offer the pallia- 
tive of charity for social injustice but transform the 
system which is destroying men — in a word, we must 
redeem the whole of life and all its relationships, re- 
ligious, economic, social, political, national and in- 
ternational. We must believe that no social good 
is impossible to attain, and no social evil impossible 
to abolish. 

An exclusive individualistic conception sought to 
save separate individuals, to get them "right with 
God," prepared for a future heaven. The new and 
wider social gospel must not only save the man him- 
self, but save him from the sin of selfish isolation 
and change all his relations. A saved individual 
Is one in harmony with God and his redemptive pur- 
pose for man. The cross is not the symbol of a sel- 
fish, personal, possessive salvation for the future, 
but a way of life for the present. It is the revela- 
tion of the redemptive love of God, giving itself for 



wo FACING THE CRISIS 

men to win them to accept not only God's free gift 
to themselves, but sacrifice as the principle of their 
lives to be lived out in service for others. The old 
individualistic conception sought to get man "right 
with God," but often stopped with the first com- 
mandment to love God without including the full 
implication of the second to love his neighbor as 
himself. 

A man cannot be right with God if he is wrong 
with men. How can he love God whom he hath not 
seen if he does not love his brother whom he hath 
seen ? If he is wrong with men he must ^^ first go and 
be reconciled" with his brother, whether in a per- 
sonal quarrel, an industrial strike or class hatred 
arising from social injustice. Christ states his own 
mission in social terms of good news for the poor, 
release for captives, sight for the blind, freedom 
for the oppressed, and the year of liberation when 
every man was to go out free, back to his God- 
given inheritance and possession. In his reply to 
the question as to what a man must do to inherit 
eternal life he shows that he must love God and his 
neighbor as himself, and like the Good Samaritan 
minister to needy humanity. His standard of judg- 
ment at the last day is measured by what we do to 
our fellowmen. His whole teaching is summed up 
in the realization of the Kingdom of God involving 
a Christian social order, based upon the principle 
of love.^ We cannot possibly reconcile the King- 
dom of God with the poverty, oppression and in- 
justice of the present order. Rather we must change 

^Luke 4:18, 10:25-37, Matt. 25:34-40. 



THE SOCIAL GOSPEL 201 

these conditions by applying Chrlst^s whole gospel 
to the whole of llfe.^ The social gospel Is as old 
as Isaiah and the teaching of Jesus. As Wesley 
well said, "The Bible knows nothing of solitary 
religion.'' ^ 

We cannot accept the warning of business inter* 
ests that the Church must "keep out" of politics 
and industry. The Church cannot forfeit its right 
of participation in moral issues in every field. It 
is concerned not only with the Christlanization of 
Africa, but of industry at home. It must give heed 
not only to how men give their money but to how 
they make it. The ministry cannot abandon its 
prophetic function. It cannot fail to apply the gos' 
pel to all the conditions of the working world and 
to the wrongs in our political, social and industrial 
life. Christ is the light of the world; not of all 
save industry, or politics, or any other special pre- 
serve of vested wrongs. He must be Lord of all, 
or he is not Lord at all. 

We do not exist In water-tight compartments. We 
must not only make better Individuals, but a bet- 
ter world. We are concerned not only that we 
should sow good seed, but that there should be good 
ground, without an environment of weeds which 
choke the life until it becomes unfruitful. We con- 

^ Professor J. A. Thomson in his "System of Animate Nature" 
shows that secure progress implies a correlation of the develop- 
ment of the organism and the improvement of the environment. 
"Lasting betterment must be realized in place and work as well 
as in people, in environment and function as well as in organism," 
p. 619. 

See F. E. Johnson, "The Social Gospel and Personal Religion," 
p. 49. 



g02 FACING THE CRISIS 

celve the Gospel as the good news of the love of 
God, revealed in Jesus Christ, calling men to repent 
and turn from their selfish, individual aims and to 
follow Christ in loving God and their fellow-men, 
as they seek to found a Christian social order called 
the Kingdom of God, which is an enlarging sphere 
of life redeemed in all its relations and environ- 
ment. We are facing the crisis as to whether we 
shall have a whole or a fragmentary gospel in the 
church today. 



XX 

THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION 

Are there any fundamental principles which 
furnish a basis for the solution of our social and 
industrial prohlemsf" 

If we seek a solution of the foregoing problems 
we will find certain principles of truth and of right 
that are grounded alike in reason, in conscience, and 
in experience. Some of them have been voiced by 
the great philosophers; some have been taught by 
the moralists; all of the essential principles were 
taught and exemplified by Jesus of Nazareth. 

He views all existence in the light of God as the 
loving Father of all men, in whom life finds its 
origin, worth and meaning. He sums up our duty 
in the twofold command to love God with all our 
heart and our neighbor as ourselves. Thus we are 
fully to share our life' with God and man. In our 
social relations with men three great principles are 
laid down in his teaching as basic and fundamental. 

In the love and purpose of God each man is of 
spiritual worth. We might call this the principle of 
Personality or the incalculable worth of every indi- 
vidual hum.an life. Second in the relation of men to 
each other Jesus teaches the principle of Brother- 
hoody that no man lives by himself or to himself 

203 



204 FACING THE CRISIS 

alone, but that all men are bound together under one 
Father in one human family, mutually related and 
interdependent, in a corporate social solidarity. 
Third, this relationship between men is fulfilled not 
in isolated, independent self-seeking, but in mutual 
Service as the expression of life, realized in the ful- 
fillment of the creative and social functions rather 
than in the acquisitive and selfish instincts for pri- 
vate gain. 

Based upon these, and following naturally as cor- 
ollaries from them, are three other principles which 
are also fundamental. Grounded upon the worth 
of the individual is the principle of Liberty as nec- 
essary for the development of personality. Founded 
upon brotherhood is the principle of Justice as the 
equal right of all members of the human family. 
Based upon service is the principle of Accountability, 
or Responsible Stewardship, where the individual 
recognizes the rights of God and of his fellow-men; 
that he is not his own, but that his life, his talents, 
and his possessions are held in trust, and that he is 
accountable both to God and to society for the use 
of his possessions. Finally Jesus sums up all his 
teachings in the great commandment of Love, as 
the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, the 
essence of the Gospel, and the central meaning of 
life. We are to love God and our neighbor as our- 
selves and to apply this all-embracing principle of 
Love in the Golden Rule, to do to others as we 
would be done by. We thus have seven fundamental 
social principles in the teaching of Jesus — Person- 
ality, Brotherhood, Service; Liberty, Justice, Ac- 



THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION 205 

countablllty; summed up In Love, the fulfillment of 
them all. 

Let us examine these seven principles and ask what 
Is their application to the social and Industrial prob- 
lems of our day. 

I. PERSONALITY. Jesus teaches the Incalcu. 
lable worth of every man as brother, before God as 
Father, whether rich or poor, white or black, fel- 
low countryman or foreigner. Man Is a child of 
God, made In his Image, with the power of an end- 
less life, capable of Infinite development. Man Is 
always recognized as an end, never a means to an 
end. He Is worth more than the whole material 
world. We are especially bidden to care for the 
lost, the poor, the disinherited, the unprivileged, 
the stranger or foreigner of another race.^ 

1. If man Is of Infinite worth. Is not the supreme 
test of industry, and of every other Institution, 
found in Its social value, its effect on men, whether 
it makes or mars manhood? Thus labor is more 
than a commodity; It Is more than a means to the 
end of property; It represents living men of in- 
finite worth. 

2. Should not the first charge on industry be the 
adequate support and protection of all the workers, 
including : 

a. A standard of living in decency and com- 
fort? 

b. Provision for continuity of employment or 
social Insurance against forced unemploy- 
ment? 

^Matt. 5:23; 16:26; 25:35-40; Luke 15, etc. 



206 FACING THE CRISIS 

c. The regulation of hours for the social 
good? 

d. Provisions for health and safety, with spe- 
cial safeguards for the work of women and 
children? 

A practical application of the worth of the indi- 
vidual is found in the growing recognition of the im- 
portance of the human factor in industry on the 
part of the more progressive employers in America 
and Great Britain. The work of Mr. Seebohm 
Rowntree In the Rowntree Cocoa works of York, 
England, affords a good example. Over half of the 
profits of the firm have already been returned to 
the community, invested in education, investigation, 
a model village, and an effort to raise the standard 
of living, not only for his own employees but for the 
labor of Britain. He says he would prefer to have 
collective bargaining, recognizing the right of 
workers to choose their own representatives In or 
out of his shop, and get a settlement with a union 
based on justice that will be kept, rather than to 
be always settling difficulties with irresponsible and 
discontented labor. Under present conditions in in- 
dustry, he believes in 

FIVE LEGITIMATE DEMANDS OF LABOR: 

( I ) The fixing of a minimum wage for all 
workers, which would enable a man to marry, to 
live in a decent home, and to bring up a family of 
normal size in a state of efficiency, leaving a rea- 
sonable margin for contingencies and recreation. 



THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION 207 

(2) The limitation of hours of the working week, 
and a bill to secure a forty-eight hour week as a 
maximum for all England. He himself, always in 
advance of legal requirements, has adopted a forty- 
four hour week. (3) Insurance against unemploy- 
ment which shall be universal and compulsory. It 
Is this fear of unemployment that haunts the worker 
and is often his chief cause of discontent. On an 
average, only five per cent of the men in Britain 
are out of employment. Mr. Rowntree proposes 
a plan entered into by the workers, the employers, 
and the State to remove this fear forever. If the 
worker pays one per cent of his wages, the indus- 
try two per cent of the wage bill, and the State 
makes a relatively small grant, all bona fide workers 
can be guaranteed either suitable employment or 
maintenance on at least half wages during unem- 
ployment. Mr. Rowntree already has such a plan 
in operation in his own factory. (4) To give the 
workers some share of democratic control in deter- 
mining the conditions under which they shall work. 
He has already instituted a series of industrial 
councils. (5) Labor should have a larger share in 
the product of industry, and more adequate remu- 
neration for services rendered. To secure the 
workers' cordial support for increased output, he 
must be given a more direct interest in the pros- 
perity of the business. 

II. BROTHERHOOD. Before God as Father, 
we are brothers in one human family. We are to 
love our neighbor as ourselves, and to do to others 
as we would be done by. We are members of one 



208 FACING THE CRISIS 

social organism, bound together In social solidarity, 
mutually dependent, and inevitably affecting one an- 
other's welfare.^ 

Does not Brotherhood involve: 

1. Friendly relationship each for all and all for 
each, the sympathetic knowledge of and concern 
for all associated in industry, employers and em- 
ployed alike? 

2. The recognition of brotherhood as embracing 
men of other races, the Negro and the foreigner, 
and as precluding war, lynching and Imperialistic 
conquest and exploitation of weaker races, nations 
and classes. 

3. Cooperation, precluding selfish competition 
based primarily upon private gain, which produces 
mutual fear, bitterness, and class strife. 

Among countless Illustrations of the principle of 
brotherhood, we may take the great Cooperatives 
of Europe. In 1844, in the mutual endeavor to 
escape debt and penury, twenty-eight humble weavers 
of Rochdale, England, started a Cooperative Move- 
ment, each Investing one pound, taking turns in man- 
aging their little store. Today, Instead of twenty- 
eight men, four million families embracing some 
fifteen million persons, or a quarter of the popula- 
tion of Great Britain, are enrolled In more than 
fifteen hundred Cooperative Societies with annual 
sales of over a billion dollars, and a bank turnover 
of two billions, or an amount greater than the annual 
budget of the American government up to the out- 
break of the war. These humble toilers by mutual 

*Matt. 7:13; Luke 10:29-37; John 16:34, 



THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION 209 

cooperation have not only escaped debt, but now 
own their own coal mines In Britain, their wheat- 
lands In Canada, their tea and sugar plantations In 
India, their factories for the making of clothing, 
shoes, and furniture, their fishing fleets and dairy 
farms. They have vindicated the practical appli- 
cation of the principle of brotherhood. 

HI. SERVICE. Service is the highest expression 
of life according to the teaching of Jesus. His 
purpose was to minister, not to be ministered unto. 
While a reasonable profit is legitimate, he calls all 
who would follow him to this dominant aim of 
service rather than private profit. Whatever we 
do to the least of men, whom he counts as his 
brethren, we do to him. This is the final test and 
judgment of our life.^ 

1. If, then, service is the supreme expression of 
all life, and man Is capable of responding to the 
highest, should not the dominant motive of industry 
be service to the community, rather than profit to 
the individual? Should not production be primarily 
for use rather than for private gain? 

2. Does not service involve the maximum devel- 
opment of industry for the social good, rather than 
the selfish limitation of production either by capital 
or labor? In the spirit of service, neither employers 
nor workers will seek to get a maximum and give 
a minimum, but both will aim to produce the maxi- 
mum for the common good. 

It would be an insult to ask what profit Wilber- 

•'Matt. 5:13-15; 6:19-35; 25:35-40; Mark I0^.5. 



210 FACING THE CRISIS 

force made in the freeing of the slaves of Britain, 
or Abraham Lincoln In the emancipation of those 
in America. What profit did Livingstone make in 
his vast service for the Dark Continent? What 
profit has Herbert Hoover made In feeding the 
starving children of Belgium and the Continent of 
Europe? He is poorer by a large fortune, but the 
world Is richer for his great human service. Let 
each individual student and business man ask whether 
service or profit is the final motive that dominates 
his life today. Which controls our ambition for 
the future, the amassing of a fortune for personal 
profit, or the measure of service by which we can 
enrich humanity? Are we seeking primarily to get 
or to give; are we living for selfishness or service, 
for mammon or God? Are we living under a pagan 
or a Christian conception of life? Let us not render 
idle lip-service to Jesus and call him "Lord, Lord," 
if we are not willing to do the things he says. If we 
are going out merely for our own personal profit 
and the crucifixion of Christ afresh in the least of 
these his brethren, the hungry, the sick, the homeless, 
the penniless, the unemployed. 

IV. LIBERTY. The development of personality 
requires freedom for self-realization, self-expres- 
sion, and self-determination. "Lordship" or 
"authority" from without Implies the repression of 
personality, treating the Individual as a thing con- 
trolled by and for another. Jesus In his opening 
sermon at Nazareth, proclaimed his program for 
humanity, as good tidings to the poor, release for 



THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION 211 

captives, freedom for the oppressed, and the year 
of jubilee or Hberty for all.^ 

1. The whole history of humanity shows the 
development of the idea of freedom. The test of 
every human institution is its development of "the 
good life," whether it liberates or enslaves, reahzes 
or represses the higher life of man. Christ tests 
the Law, the Sabbath, Pharisaism, and the institu- 
tions of his day by their contribution to life. His 
great work was to liberate from bondage, to make 
men whole in body, mind, and spirit. Centuries 
later, in the light of his teaching, men tested slavery 
by its fruits and abolished it. In like manner politi- 
cal liberty was gained as a necessary requisite for 
man's highest development. So today, we must test 
our social and industrial life. Does modern industry 
develop man or make him often a cog, a hand, a 
machine, a commodity to be bought and sold in the 
labor market, with little or no control over the con- 
ditions of his industrial life, or over the adequate 
sharing of its production? 

2. Does not the liberty of the individual for full 
development exclude the autocratic control of one 
person by another and require the gradual grov/th 
of democracy? We conceive that democracy not 
only applies in government, but that all of wealth, 
education, leisure, culture, art, religion, industry — 
in short, all of life — should be in the interest of all 
the people, growingly administered by all the people, 
for all the people. 

3. If men are more than a commodity or a mere 

*Luke 4:18; Mark 10:42-45; John 8:31-37; io:io. 



212 FACING THE CRISIS 

means to an end for the profit of others, have not 
all who toil in industry a right to some share in 
determining the conditions under which they shall 
work ? 

4. Have not all who labor, whether as employers 
or employed, the right to organize for their mutual 
protection and welfare, or is this the right of em- 
ployers alone? 

5. Under the principle of liberty, have not all 
workers, employers and employed alike, the right 
to choose their own representatives for industrial 
conference? Or, should the workers who constitute 
the large majority be compelled, uneducated and 
inadequately represented, to be subject to the auto- 
cratic control of a minority which exercises the right 
of collective organization, possessing an overwhelm- 
ing financial, legal, political, and commercial concen- 
tration of power, which it denies to the majority? 

From the first chapter of the Bible which contains 
the Magna Carta of human liberty, man was created 
*'to replenish the earth, and subdue it; and to have 
dominion," not over his fellow-men to exploit them, 
but over the forces of nature in the full development 
of his free creative spirit. For many centuries man 
has been struggling on toward the realization of 
this God-given heritage of freedom. Yesterday, 
today, and forever there is a deathless demand in 
the depths of his soul for democracy, for liberty, and 
for justice. 

We may, by coercive laws administered in the in- 
terest of a special class, deny the right of men to 
strike. But the only ultimate prevention of strikes 



THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION 213 

is the justice and humanity of a square deal for all. 
Nor can the measure of justice be determined by the 
privileged minority for the majority whose life they 
do not share or understand. 

When the writer asked Mr. Whitley, founder of 
the Whitley Councils, Speaker of the House of Com- 
mons, himself a great employer, his views concern- 
ing collective bargaining, he replied, "We employ- 
ers in Great Britain regard collective bargaining, 
or the right of workers to choose their own rep- 
resentatives where they will, as both inevitable and 
desirable. It is inevitable and cannot be success- 
fully resisted. It is desirable in that we get better 
results by the cordial recognition of the unions, by 
mutual cooperation and good will, rather than by 
repression and the denial of the equal rights of all." 

V. JUSTICE. Jesus warns against the folly and 
wrong of the selfish accumulation of wealth. He 
utters his woes against the selfish rich, and says how 
hardly shall they enter the Kingdom of God, re- 
peatedly calling men to give, and to share their pos- 
sessions. He bitterly denounces the Pharisees for 
their neglect of justice and mercy, for their covet- 
ousness and exploitation of the poor.^ 

I. In the light of Jesus' stern denunciation of 
the selfish accumulation of wealth, and of failure to 
relieve the poor, can we justify and accept as final 
and inevitable the present unhealthy congestion of 
wealth for the privileged few and poverty for many 
in the unprivileged class of society? Is it Christian 
to seek to grow rich in a poor world? 

^Matt. 5:6; 23:23; Mark 12:40. 



214 FACING THE CRISIS 

2. Does not justice involve the right to demo- 
cratic equality of opportunity for the highest and 
fullest life of all, whether employer or employee, 
white or black, rich or poor? 

If justice and righteousness are fundamentals in 
the teaching of Jesus, if he condemns the unlimited, 
selfish accumulation of wealth, and arraigns the 
Pharisees, with all their religious zeal, for their 
neglect of justice and mercy, their covetousness and 
exploitation of the poor, how does this principle ap- 
ply to the present social order? 

VI. ACCOUNTABILITY, or Responsible Stew- 
ardship. Jesus constantly teaches that God is the 
Author of all, and that man is dependent, account- 
able, responsible as a trustee or steward, for his life, 
his talents, and his possessions. We are responsible 
to God, and to men as our brother's keeper.^ 

1. If God is the Owner of all and I am respon- 
sible for my fellow-members of the social organism, 
have I a right to regard what I possess as my abso- 
lute personal property? Do I recognize the rights 
of God and of my brother men in my possessions? 
Do I recognize property as a stewardship for which 
I am accountable both to God and man, and for 
which I shall be judged? 

2. If all values are dependent upon God's nat- 
ural resources or are socially created by the co- 
operation of my fellowmen, have I a right to the 
selfish monopoly of the fruits of the toil of others? 

3. If I have the privilege of possessing property 
for use, have I the right of property for power over 

^Luke 16:10-14; Matt. 25:35-40. 



THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION 215 

the lives of others, such as shall render them de- 
pendent upon their labor as a mere commodity and 
deprive them of full self-determination and self-de- 
velopment? 

As Bishop Gore, in his book on "Property," points 
out, if God is the absolute Owner of all, and the 
community holds the right of eminent domain, we 
have a relative and dependent trusteeship, limited 
by the purpose for which it was entrusted to us. 
Aristotle maintains the principle of private prop- 
erty as necessary for the full realization of the 
higher life of the individual, as an instrument for 
the development of personality. But our present 
unjust system of distribution deprives a vast ma- 
jority of property for use, in home or shop, in lands 
or tools, and concentrates it in the hands of a few 
for power over the lives of multitudes of men. 
Bishop Gore, in the light of our present un-Christian 
and unjust system, asks, "Are we as Christians ready 
for a deep and courageous and corporate act of sac- 
rifice and restitution?" 

VII. LOVE. The social teachings of Jesus are 
summed up in the all-inclusive principle of love, or 
self-giving. He views the world in the light of the 
ideal of the Kingdom of God, involving the moral 
organization of mankind, summed up in the com- 
mand to love our neighbor, and applied in the Gol- 
den Rule, to do to others as we would be done by.^ 

*Matt. 7:12; 22:36. The Golden Rule as a social maxim can 
be thus stated: "I wish to be treated as a person, ray individuality- 
respected, my hopes, aims, efforts appreciated, my failings not 
excused but forgiven, my rights generously conceded. I never 
want to be regarded as one of the masses. I shall therefore 
remember that each other person feels as I do, and comport myself 



gl6 FACING THE CRISIS 

I. If the Golden Rule is the end of the Law and 
the Prophets and the very essence of the Gospel, 
can we say that it is being widely applied under pres- 
ent conditions in society? Are we prepared to ap- 
ply it so far as in us lies in our personal, social, racial 
and business relations? 

Was not the World War one terrible lesson of 
the result of failing to apply these principles of 
Jesus to life? Was not the war only a symptom 
of the underlying strife of the present order? 
Peace is the result of a way of life which we have 
largely rejected in our industrial, social and politi- 
cal life. 

How can this great principle of love, or self-giv- 
ing, be translated and incarnated in life? Let us 
take an illustration of an Oxford student, Arnold 
Toynbee. Instead of seeking a selfish vacation in 
idle ease and pleasure, he went down one summer 
into the London slums to share the privilege of his 
education with those to whom it was denied. Such 
work carried on by Canon Barnett and others led 
to the founding of Toynbee Hall. Mr. J. J. Mal- 
lon, is now conducting this work of social service, 
where a score of university men are sharing their 
education with the unprivileged mass in the poverty- 
stricken slums of London. Knowing their conditions 
led Mr. Mallon and others to the founding of the 
Anti-Sweating League which has largely driven 
sweated labor from Britain. This led on to the pas- 
sage of the Trade Boards Act. Now, instead of set- 

toward him, and use all my endeavors that society shall com- 
port itself toward him with respect to his personality." — Soares, 
"Social Institutions and Ideals of the Bible," p. 328. 



THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION 217 

tling wages by heartless competition with the most 
merciless employer, they are settled by legal sanc- 
tion by the best minds of England. On a Trade 
Board half the members are appointed by labor, 
half represent the employers, while three neutral 
experts are appointed by the Minister of Labor on 
behalf of the government. The wage scale of an 
entire Industry is thus settled impartially, nation- 
ally and legally. Already the standard of living 
has been steadily lifted for some five millions in 
labor. 

Are not these seven principles of Personality, 
Brotherhood, Service, Liberty, Justice, Accountabil- 
ity, and Love, grounded alike in the authority of 
conscience, of reason and experience? Are they not 
the only ultimate solution of the crucial problems 
of the age, and does not the hope of the world lie 
in our applying them in our own lives and to the pres- 
ent social order? Do not the social principles of 
Jesus stand in clear contrast with much of the prac- 
tice of the world to-day, in the ultimate Issue between 
idealism and materialism, God and mammon, the 
Christian and the pagan view of life? We are fac- 
ing the crisis of a choice between the two. 

Christ's Principles Pagan Practice 

1. Personality Possessions 

2. Brotherhood Strife 

3. Service Profit 

4. Liberty Repression 

5. Justice Injustice 

6. Accountability Irresponsibility 

7. Love Selfishness 



XXI 

MOTIVES AND OBJECTIVES IN LIFE WORK 

What motive should dominate a man in the 
choice and fulfillment of his life workf 

Generlcally there are two possible attitudes to life, 
the selfish and the unselfish, the materialistic and 
the spiritual, the pagan and the Christian. 

The selfish individual has exclusively developed 
the acquisitive or possessive instincts rather than the 
creative and social faculties. Men who are domi- 
nated by these lower motives together form a pagan 
society, living for private gain or profit, for personal 
power or success rather than for the social good. 
This brings the struggle of each self-centered life 
into inevitable competition with other selfish indi- 
viduals with resultant strife. This conflict takes 
place between individuals, tribes, social classes, in- 
dustrial groups, races and nations, and whether na- 
tional, racial or industrial, finally culminates in war. 
Such warfare is always latent and occasionally overt 
in a pagan society. Our semi-pagan civilization to- 
day is characterized by constantly recurring warfare. 

Jesus appeared as the fulfillment and revelation 
of life's true motive and purpose. In him life and 
love are consummated in self-realization and serv- 
ice for others. Life, according to his view, does not 

218 



MOTIVES AND OBJECTIVES 219 

consist in ^'things," possessions, pleasures, or sensu- 
ous satisfactions, but in the sum total of personal re- 
lationships, human and divine. Its social end is not 
an isolated individual, the dictatorshp of a single 
class, or of a competing nation. The ultimate social 
organism is the realm of God, or in the phrase of 
H. G. Wells, "the common-weal of God," that is, a 
Christian social order united by the one constrain- 
ing motive of love. "Above all nations is human- 
ity." Men who are united in following his way of 
life in cooperative good will transcend the three 
great cleavages of the modern world In the national, 
racial and class strife of our day. 

In the modern world, which is still largely selfish 
and pagan in its motives and standards, individuals 
are slowly developing. According to the four stages 
mentioned by Hegel, there is : First, the individual 
living in himself, primitive, undeveloped like the 
babe. Second, the individual existing /or himself, 
selfish and assertive, seeking his own partial ends re- 
gardless of others, typified by the undisciplined 
youth. Third, the Individual existing for others, en- 
tering his apprenticeship in service. Lastly, there is 
the mature Individual in himself and for others, in 
the growing self-realization of a developing person- 
ality, expressed in a life of mature service. 

The individual student will find himself today in 
one of these four stages and he will be dominated by 
one of two ultimate motives. Either he Is living the 
selfish life, aiming at the accumulation of private 
profit in money-making for his own power, prestige 
or success, or he is dominated by the motive of un- 



220 FACING THE CRISIS 

selfish love and may enter life as a socialized per- 
sonality, living in service for his fellowmen. 

In one of the great rifle contests at Bisley, a con- 
testant had one more target to make to win the cham- 
pionship. He fired, hit the bull's eye, but lost the 
match. By mistake he had aimed at the wrong 
target. Many a man misses the mark because he 
has failed, to find the meaning of life and is not aim- 
ing at life's true end. 

The aim of life is not wealth. Man's essential 
nature is spiritual. Aristotle maintains that happi- 
ness is found in the harmonious exercise of function, 
where every faculty is called into full play in a com- 
pletely developed personality. We cannot satisfy 
the higher nature of man by glutting the physical 
appetites while starving the soul. "A man's life 
consisteth not in the abundance of the things which 
he possesseth." The millionaire Beit in South 
Africa died of worry. He had so many diamond 
and gold mines, so many stocks and bonds, that he 
could not sleep at night for fear of losing some of 
his possessions. They were not really his posses- 
sions, for he did not possess them, but they him. 
Experience shows that material wealth can never sat- 
isfy the hunger of the human heart. 

The aim of life is not pleasure. Epicurus said, 
"We call pleasure the alpha and omega of the 
blessed life." From the Epicurean Horace and 
Lucretius to the present day, hosts of men have 
sought to realize life in pleasure. Byron, writing 
in early manhood, as one who had missed the mark 



MOTIVES AND OBJECTIVES 221 

and failed to find the meaning of life, voices the 
experience of millions when he says : 

"My days are in the yellow leaf, 

The flowers, the fruits of love are gone; 
The worm, the canker, and the grief 
Are mine alone." 

Pleasure fails to satisfy for the same reason as 
wealth. Feeding the physical appetites or pamper- 
ing the lower nature can never satisfy the craving of 
the soul of man, for the soul Is restless until it finds 
full life in the harmonious exercise of all Its func- 
tions. 

The aim of life Is not power ^^ prestige, position, 
ambition or the favor of man. The quest for power, 
as Professor Royce shows, Is necessarily subject to 
fortune. It brings man Into Inevitable conflict with 
other selfish wills and leads to self-destruction. The 
tragedies of the world have been found In seekers 
after power. "Tragedy, comedy and the wisdom of 
the ages show the futility of the lust for power.^' 

No man should choose his life work save from 
the highest motive of rendering the maximum service 
to his fellow men. In facing the crisis in the choice 
of his vocation the student stands at the parting of 
the ways. Is his choice to be selfish or sacrificial, 
material or spiritual, pagan or Christian? Is he 
to follow Judas or Christ, Is he to seek his thirty 
pieces of silver or take up his cross of sacrifice? Is 
he to copy the rich young ruler who went away sor- 
rowful from the vision of a life of service because 
he had great possessions unconsecrated and unsur- 



222 FACING THE CRISIS 

rendered, or Paul who counted all things loss, that 
he might abandon himself to the venture of a sublime 
sacrifice? 

Let each of us renounce his own selfish ambition 
and yield himself in complete surrender to seek 
God's will for his life. Huxley wrote, "Science 
seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest 
manner the great truth which is embodied in the 
Christian conception of entire surrender to the 
will of God." William James said: "Self-surrender 
has always been and must always be regarded as the 
vital turning point of the religious life. One may 
say that the whole development of Christianity in 
inwardness has consisted in little more than the 
greater and greater emphasis attached to this crisis 
of self-surrender." 

We face today an unprecedented world situa- 
tion. Humanity, as we have seen, is rent in three 
great cleavages, in national, racial, and industrial 
strife. An old order is doomed or dying all about 
us — a materialistic order, of selfish privilege and 
competitive force, breaking out in periodic war. 
But a new social order is being born in the hearts 
of men, a spiritual order of life and love — of life 
abundant for each individual, and of cooperant good 
will in united action for the common good. 

Can we not discern the signs of the times? Here 
is a world of men, suffering under social injustice, 
industrial exploitation, race prejudice, imperialistic 
conquest, and militaristic coercion. And here and 
now is "one clear call for me" to a life of service. 
If any man would respond, let him deny his personal 



MOTIVES AND OBJECTIVES 223 

ambition for amassing private profit for special 
privilege and power, and taking up his life in self- 
renunciation and dedication to the common good, 
seek the building of a Christian social order, hy fol- 
lowing Jesus^ way of life. We are facing the crisis 
of this call. 



XXII 

CONCLUSION— THE FAITH OF A MODERN 
CHRISTIAN 

7^ there any practical value in creeds, or are they 
a repressive tyranny of the past? Can a modern 
Christian form a working faith of his own in har- 
mony with modern science and philosophy? 

By way of reply the writer will endeavor to make 
a brief statement of his own belief. The term 
"modern Christian" is here used to denote one who 
seeks to find truth rather than to defend tradition; 
one who accepts the method of evolution discovered 
by modern science as the way of God's working in 
the natural world; one who adopts the principle of 
historical criticism, seeking by patient inductive study 
to ascertain fact at whatever cost ; one who lives in 
the freedom of the spirit, not under the bondage of 
external compulsion, and who finds the touchstone 
of truth, the final seat of authority, not in any ex- 
ternal institution or record, but in God as revealed in 
Jesus. 

By the creed of a modern Christian is meant not 
some imposed belief, not some second-hand tradi- 
tion which one must repeat, not some barrier of 
prison bars beyond which one may not pass, but 
the glorious adventure and growing achievement of 
experience ; the vital and enlarging grasp of life. 

224 



CONCLUSION 225 

I. I BELIEVE IN GOD 

1. I believe that God is. 

Because of the total demand of my nature, and the 

demand of the universe for an adequate cause, 

Because the God whom my nature demands I find 

revealed in Jesus Christ. 

Because the God whom my nature demands and who 

is revealed in Jesus, I find verified and realized In 

experience. 

2. I believe that God is good. 

Because, although I see much evil in the world which 
at first sight apparently contradicts the good, I see 
growing evidence of a power ''not ourselves that 
makes for righteousness," dimly in nature, more 
adequately revealed in the spiritual capacity of 
humanity, and finally in Jesus Christ. I find this 
belief in good answered by the deepest intuition of 
my soul, and the growing verification of Christian 
experience. I believe that God is love and that his 
infinite care embraces the wide universe and each 
individual. 

3. I believe that God is mighty. 

I believe that God Is sovereign and all powerful, 
though self-limited by the free will of man. I 
believe that God is able, that he is faithful and that 
he effectively cares for the universe and for me. 

I believe that God is the infinite, personal Spirit, 
who is the source and ground of all existence, who 
creates, sustains and guides the universe according 
to his purpose. Therefore I believe that the universe 
is friendly, and that all things will finally work 



226 FACING THE CRISIS 

together for ultimate good to those who are in 
harmony with God. 

II. I BELIEVE IN JESUS CHRIST 

1. I believe that he is unique. 

Unique in the Bible, as the consummation of the 
Old Testament, the center of the Gospels, the cul- 
mination of the Epistles. 

Unique in religion, as the fulfillment of all the frag- 
mentary and broken aspirations of humanity. 
Unique in all experience, as the satisfaction of life's 
deepest longings. 

2. Unique in what he was and is. 

I believe that he is unique in his character, its 
strength, love, wisdom, purity; its balance and moral 
perfection; unique in its overwhelming impression 
and lasting influence, alike upon his contemporaries 
and upon all ages. I believe in his risen life, and 
presence and power. 

3. Unique in what he does. 

He brings God to man. He Is our one supreme 
revelation of God. He brings God to man in his 
character, as God revealed in a human life; in his 
teachings, as living truth ; and in our personal expe- 
rience, in which God becomes to us the one great 
reality. Thus I find in Jesus, "The Likeness of the 
Unseen God," the revelation of the Father. 

He brings man to God. By his example, as he 
shows the way to God; by his teaching, as he reveals 
the meaning of life; by sharing with us his expe- 
rience of God, as the "Pioneer of Life," "the first- 
born of a great brotherhood." 



CONCLUSION 227 

But finally he brings men to God through his death 
upon the cross. I believe that the cross of Christ 
is the revelation in time and space of the infinite 
and eternal element of self-giving sacrifice which is 
the essential nature of God himself, as love. I 
believe that "God was in Christ reconciling the 
world unto himself," that in his cross we see the 
very suffering heart of God. I believe that in his 
death there is a revelation of the holy love of God, 
and of the sin of man, a moral influence which melts 
the heart and moves man to repentance, and finally, 
a manifestation of the all-loving Father suffering 
with and for his children. 

4. Unique as the Center of Life, 
I believe that his life is the revelation of the divine 
life of man, and of the human life of God. I believe 
that he was truly, normally and utterly human, and 
as such a normal example for us. I believe that 
I find In him true man and very God; my Saviour, 
my Lord and my Life. 

I believe that all human experience, in philosophy, 
science, art, morality, and religion, is like an arch, 
broken and incomplete, which needs the single Key- 
stone of Jesus Christ, as the supreme revelation of 
one Infinite, loving, intelligent Will, to enable us 
to see life steadily, to see it whole, and finally to 
realize it as complete. 

III. I BELIEVE IN MAN 

I. I believe In man not only as he is, imperfect, 
but in the light of his divine origin and ideal end. 
I believe in him as potentially a son of God, who can 



228 FACING THE CRISIS 

share God's life as his fellow-worker; a son, 
redeemed in Christ as the head of a new humanity, 
a son with inalienable rights. 

2. I believe that the individual man is of infinite 
worthy with undreamed latent capacities and possi- 
bilities; worth all the love of God, worth the sacri- 
fice of Christ, worth the whole creation of which 
he is the crown. 

3. I believe in a life abundant that includes the 
two poles of the individual and the social as coordi- 
nate and complementary. I believe in personal sal- 
vation, by which the individual accepts his relation 
to God as Father which gives him the glad assur- 
ance of sonship, and sends him out to win his brother. 

I believe in social salvation through Christ, that 
includes, not only the transforming of the individual 
in all his relationships, but of his whole environment 
as well. To this end I believe that we must spirit- 
ualize and socialize the whole of life : 

Society, that its members may become truly co- 
operative rather than selfishly competitive; recog- 
nizing their responsibilities rather than fighting for 
their individual rights; performing their functions 
rather than claiming their exclusive possessions; 
sharing their opportunities rather than appropriat- 
ing special privileges; 

Industry, that we may recognize that its end is 
public service rather than private profit; for a high 
idealism rather than a sordid materialism, with the 
ethical standards of a profession rather than under 
the lawless instincts of the jungle, based upon the 
Golden Rule rather than upon the rule of gold; 



CONCLUSION 229 

Work, as a divinely appointed discipline of charac- 
ter, a sacrament in which we share in the free crea- 
tive activity of God, for the end of human develop- 
ment rather than material accumulation, to make 
man not a slave of a machine, but a fellow worker 
with God in the service of his fellow men ; 

Property, as stewardship rather than ownership, 
not as the absolute, independent and exclusive pos- 
session of the individual, but as a trust relative to 
the ownership of God and the rights of the com- 
munity; with private property for use, for all, rather 
than for power for the few over the dispossessed 
lives of the many. 

IV. I BELIEVE IN THE MEANS OF LIFE 

1. / believe in the Bible. 

As a record of man's experience of God and of 
God's gradual revelation to man. 

As a means of life, a springing fountain of living 
water, which has quenched my thirst and through 
which I have found Christ, God, life. 

I believe that the Bible Is a divinely inspired hu- 
man record of the progressive revelation of God to 
man, culminating In Jesus Christ, giving us the high- 
est and fullest spiritual knowledge of God and man. 
I believe that its inspiration is vital, not mechanical, 
that it is the record of lives inspired which in turn 
inspire us and lead us into the life of God; but not 
mechanically controlled so as to crush the full 
freedom of human expression. 

2. / believe in Pr^\yer as the very breath of the 



230 FACING THE CRISIS 

spiritual life, as religion In act, the highest activity 
of the human spirit. 

I believe in prayer as actual, immediate, spiritual 
fellowship with God as our Father. 

I believe in prayer as a means of asking and 
receiving the things which we need, which are accord- 
ing to his will, and as intercession for our fellow 
men. 

3. / believe in Service ^ Sacrifice, and Suffering: 
In service and human toil as God's divinely 

appointed means for the development and sharing 
of life. 

In self-sacrifice, and in suffering rightly borne, 
as the great discipline and purifier of life. I believe 
that some suffering Is disciplinary, to warn, instruct, 
and develop man; some Is remedial, to purge him 
from sin ; some suffering is redemptive and vicarious, 
the innocent suffering for the guilty in order to save. 

4. / believe in the Church. 

Because I believe in organization and cooperation 
in all realms of human endeavor, I believe in the 
Church as a divinely authorized human means for 
the realization of a Christian social order called 
the Kingdom of God on earth. Despite all its 
acknowledged human and historic imperfections, I 
believe in the ideal of the Church apostolic, catholic, 
visible and united. I believe not only In the spirit 
of unity, but in working, without sacrifice of prin- 
ciple, for the corporate union of the shattered frag- 
ments of the Church of Christ. 

I believe that the Church exists not primarily as 
the home of orthodoxy, or as a preparation for a 



CONCLUSION 231 

future life; not as a spiritual circle of special privi- 
lege, or for the perpetuation of traditional forms 
and ceremonies, but for the realization of the life 
of God in the soul of man, and for cooperation in 
strenuous service for the application of the prin- 
ciples of Jesus to all realms of life and to all classes, 
races and nations of the world.^ 
*See Appendix I. 



Appendix I 

THE FELLOWSHIP FOR A CHRISTIAN 
SOCIAL ORDER 



This Fellowship binds together _or mutual counsel, in- 
spiration and cooperation, men and women who are seeking 
to effect fundamental changes in the spirit and structure of 
the present social order through loyalty to Jesus' way of 
life. 

II 

We believe that the deepest human fellowship has its 
necessary basis in fellowship with God as he is revealed 
in Jesus. 

Ill 

We believe that according to the life and teaching of 
Jesus, the supreme task of mankind is the creation of a 
social order, the Kingdom of God on earth, wherein the 
maximum opportunity shall be afforded for the develop- 
ment and enrichment of every human personality; in which 
the supreme motive shall be love; wherein men shall co- 
operate in service for the common good and brotherhood 
shall be a reality in all of the daily relationships of life. 



IV 

We must, therefore, endeavor tO' transform such unchris- 
tian attitudes and practices as now hinder fellowship; ex- 
travagant luxury for some, while many live in poverty 
and want; excessive concentration of power and privilege 
as a result of vast wealth in the hands of a few; monopoly 
of natural resources for private gain; autocratic control of 
industry by any group; production for individual profit 

233 



234 FACING THE CRISIS 

and power rather than for social use and service; arrogance 
and antagonism of classes, nations and races; war, the final 
denial of brotherhood. 



We believe that in the spirit and principles of Jesus is 
found the way of overcoming these evils, and that within 
the Christian Church there should be a unity of purpose 
and endeavor for the achievement of a Christian social 
order. By means of fellowship In thought and prayer we 
come to understand the point of view of those who differ 
from us, make possible new discoveries of truth, and aid 
one another In the solution of common problems. We be- 
lieve that social changes should be effected through educa- 
tional and spiritual processes, especially by an open-minded 
examination of existing evils and suggested solutions, full 
discussion and varied experimentation. We pledge our- 
selves to vigorous activity In seeking by these means a solu- 
tion of the social problems which we face. 

VI 

The Fellowship functions through personal contact, 
correspondence, group meetings and periodic conferences — 
local, sectional and national. Plans for action resulting 
from these conferences will, so far as possible, be carried 
out through existing organizations, or In some manner 
independent of the Fellowship, since Its office Is not ad- 
ministrative or legislative. The Fellowship does not plan 
to conduct classes, open forums, conferences or kindred 
activities for non-members, nor to pass resolutions of any 
sort or go on record as endorsing or disapproving any 
special program or practice. 

VII 

In our desire to avoid over-organization, the structure of 
the Fellowship has been made as simple as possible. There 
is a National Committee of 50 members, an Executive Com- 
mittee of 20 members, an Executive Secretary, and a Con- 
vener of each local group. The members of each group 
shall meet together from time to time without fonnal or- 



APPENDIX 235 

ganizatlon. The minimum of necessary expense is met by 
voluntary gifts. 

VIII 

Men and women who agree with the principles outlined 
herein, and who desire to co-operate with those of like mind 
and purpose, are invited to become members of the Fellow- 
ship for a Christian Social Order.^ 

Appendix II 

THE SOCIAL IDEALS OF THE CHURCHES 

I. Equal rights and justice for all men in all stations 
of life. 
II. Protection of the family by the single standard of 
purity, uniform divorce laws, proper regulation 
of marriage, proper housing. 

III. The fullest possible development of every child, 

especially by the provision of education and 
recreation. 

IV. Abolition of child labor. 

V. Such regulation of the conditions of toil for women 
as shall safeguard the physical and moral health 
of the community. 
VI. Abatement and prevention of poverty. 
VII. Protection of the individual and society from the 
social, economic, and moral waste of the liquor 
traffic. 
VIII. Conservation of health. 

IX. Protection of the worker from dangerous machin- 
ery, occupational diseases, and m.ortality. 
X. The right of all men to the opportunity for self- 
maintenance, for safeguarding this right against 
encroachments of every kind, for the protection 
of workers from the hardships of enforced un- 
employment. 

* Those desiring further information or wishing to start a local 
group to consider these social, industrial and religious problems 
should write to the secretary, Mr. Kirby Page, 311 Division Street, 
Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey. 



2SG FACING THE CRISIS 

XL Suitable provision for the old age of the workers, 
and for those incapacitated by injury. 
XII. The right of employees and employers alike to or- 
ganize; and for adequate means of conciliation 
and arbitration in industrial disputes. 

XIII. Release from employment one day in seven. 

XIV. Gradual and reasonable reduction of hours of labor 

to the low^est practicable point, and for that 
degree of leisure for all v^hich is a condition 
of the highest human life. 
XV. A living v^^age as a minimum in every Industry, and 
for the highest wa.gQ that each industry -can 
afford. 
XVI. A new emphasis upon the application of Christian 
principles to the acquisition and use of prop- 
erty, and for the most equitable division of the 
product of industry that can ultimately be 
devised. 

In 1919 in the midst of a new industrial unrest and in 
the light of the many lessons of the war the Federal Coun- 
cil reafErmed the social creed and adopted four additional 
resolutions which are in the nature of a present day inter- 
pretation of the above ''Creed" itself: 

I; That the teachings of Jesus are those of essential 
democracy and express themselves through brotherhood and 
the cooperation of all groups. We deplore class struggle 
and declare against all class domination, whether of capital 
or labor. Sympathizing with labor's desire for a better 
day and an equitable share in the profits and management 
of industry, we stand for orderly and progressive social re- 
construction instead of revolution by violence. 

2. That an ordered and constructive democracy in in- 
dustry is as necessary as political democracy, and that col- 
lective bargaining and the sharing of shop control and 
management are inevitable steps in its attainment. 

3. That the first charge upon industry should be that 
of a wage sufficient to support an American standard of 
living. To that end we advocate the guarantee of a mini- 
mum wage, the control of unemployment through govern- 
ment labor exchanges, public works, land settlement, social 



APPENDIX 237 

insurance and experimentation in profit sharing and co- 
operative ownership. 

4. We recognize that women played no small part in 
the winning of the war. We believe that they should have 
full political and economic equality with equal pay for equal 
work, and a maximum eight-hour day. We declare for 
the abolition of night work by women, and the abolition 
of child labor; and for the provision of adequate safeguards 
to insure the moral as well as the physical health of the 
mothers and children of the race. 

Appendix III 

BOOKS ON CURRENT SOCIAL PROBLEMS 

Christianity and Economic Problems 

Federal Council of Churches $ .50 

The Church and Industrial Reconstruction 

Cloth, $2.00; Paper i.oo 

The Acquisitive Society 

R. H. Tawney 1.50 

The Social Principles of Jesus 

Walter Rauschenbusch 1. 15 

Industry and Human Welfare 

William L. Chenery , 1. 75 

The Coming of Coal 

R. W. Bruere i.oo 

The Iron Man 

Arthur Pounds 1.75 

The Christian View of Work and Wealth .85 

The Social Function of the Church 

Malcolm Spencer i.oo 

The New Social Order 

H. F. Ward 2.50 

Labour in the Commonwealth 

G. D. H. Cole 1.50 

Property 

Bishop Gore and others 2.00 

Economics for the General Reader 

Henry Clay 2.cx) 

Denmark (On Rural and Agricultural Problems) 

Frederick C. Howe 2.00 



238 FACING THE CRISIS 

PAMPHLETS ON SOCIAL PROBLEMS 

America: Its Problems and Perils 

Sherwood Eddy $.10 

Industrial Facts 

Kirby Page lO 

Collective Bargaining 

Kirby Page lO 

The United States Steel Corporation 

Kirby Page lO 

The Sword or the Cross 

Kirby Page 15 

Incentives in Modem Life 

Kirby Page lO 

The Wage Question 

Federal Council of Churches 10 

The Coal Controversy 

Federal Council of Churches lO 

The Social Gospel and Personal Religion 

F. Ernest Johnson 25 

The Labor Spy 

Sidney Howard 15 

PERIODICALS TREATING SOCIAL PROBLEMS 

The Survey $5.00 per year 

112 East 19th St., New York, N. Y. 
The Nation $5.00 per year 

20 Vesey St., New York, N. Y. 
The New Republic $5.00 per year 

421 West 2 1 St St., New York, N. Y. 

The Christian Century $4.00 per year 

(Ministers, $3.00 per year) 

508 So. Dearborn St., Chicago, 111. 
The World Tomorrow $1.00 per year 

396 Broadway, New York, N. Y. 
The Literary Digest $4.CX) per year 

354 Fourth Ave., New York, N. Y. 
All of these Books and Pamphlets may he secured through 

ASSOCIATION PRESS 

347 Madison Avenue New York^ N. Y, 



INDEX 



Accountability, 214. 

American Federation of Labor, 

189. 
Aristotle, 29, 32. 
Attention, 143. 
Augustine, 55, 71, 142. 

Begbie, 135. 
Bergson, 106. 
Bevan on prayer, 124. 
Bible, 97 ff., 229. 
Bibliography, 237 flF. 
Bliss, General, 178. 
Booth, 135. 
Brandeis, Justice, 184. 
Brown, Chas. R., 103. 
Browning, 40. 
Brotherhood, 207, 228. 
Bryce, Lord, 166. 
Buckle, III. 
Buddha, 24, 29, 154. 
Butler, Bishop, 94. 
Byron, 220. 

Cabot, Richard, 146, 180. 
Carlyle, 68. 
Carver, Prof., 170. 
Chesterton, 48. 
Christ, 15 ff. 
Christian, 132. 
Christian Solution, 203 flF. 
Church, 230. 
Clarke, Prof., 50. 
Cole, G. D. H., 179. 
Coleridge, 99. 

Collective Bargaining, 187 ff. 
Commons, John R., 196. 
Commission on Industrial Rela- 
tions, 179, 192. 
Concentration, 182. 
Confucius, 29, 153. 



239 



Conversion, 131 ff. 
Cross of Christ, 19, 41, 72-76, 
227. 

Darwin, 52, 112. 

David, 142. 

Death, 82. 

Divinity of Jesus, 15-45. 

Dorsey, Governor, 168. 

Dowie, 115. 

Eddy, Arden, 84. 
Emerson, 99, 178. 
Environment, 31. 
Epicurus, 220. 
Erskine, 56. 
Esau, 143. 
Eucken, 52. 

Evil, Problem of, 65 ff. 
Evolution, no ff. 
Experience, 41. 

Faith of a Modern Christian, 
224 ff. 

Federal Council of Churches, 
193, 235. 

Fellowship for a Christian So- 
cial Order, 233 ff. 

Fiske, John, 69, 82. 

Foreign Born, 165. 

Foreign Missions, 151 ff. 

Fosdick, H. E., 79, 83. 

Francis of Assisi, 71. 

Genesis, 118. 
Gladden, W., 34. 
God, 47 ff., 81, 88, 124, 225. 
Goethe, 82. 
Golden Rule, 216. 
Gorapers, Samuel, 189. 
Gore, Bishop, 58, 60, 113. 
Gwatkin, 103, 155. 



mo 



FACING THE CRISIS 



Hadfield, Capt., 92. 

Hankey, Donald, 48. 

Headlara, A. C, 93. 

Hegel, 155. 

Heine, 99. 

Hibbert Journal, 95. 

Hinduism, 29, 153. 

Hocking, 63. 

Hogg, A. G., 92. 

Hohenzollern, 163. 

Horse, 117. 

Horton, R. F., 20, 107. 

Hume, 94. 

Huxley, 95, 222. 

Ignorance, 30. 
Immortality, 77 ff. 
Imprecatory Psalms, loi. 
Industrial Unrest, 179 ff., 228. 
Inequality, 185, 186. 
Inter-Church Report, 180. 
Inter-Racial Committees, 168. 
Islam, 154. 

James, Prof., 127, 128, 135, 139, 

149, 222. 
Jesus Christ, 15 ff., 226. 

Achievements, 28, 31 ff., 88. 

Character, i6. 

Keystone, the, 37 ff. 

Relationships, 25. 

Resurrection, 80, 89. 

Summary, 45. 

Teaching, 31, loi, 108. 
Judaism, 153. 
Justice, 213. 

Kant, 56. 

King, Pres. H. C, 66, 89, 93, 

146, 149. 
King, W. I., 183. 
Klein, H. H., 183. 
Knox, G. W., 93. 
Ku Klux Klan, 168. 

Last Judgment, 72. 
Lecky, 31, 178. 
LeConte, iii. 
Liberty, 210. 
Lincoln, 194. 
Lodge, Sir Oliver, 95. 



Love, 215. 
Luther, 112. 
Lynching, 166. 

McCheyne, 107. 
Mahan, Admiral, 173. 
Man, 227. 

Manly, J. Frank, 31. 
Masefield, 134. 
Materialism, 49, 51. 
Mathews, Basil, 156. 
Micou, R. W., 93. 
Mill, John Stewart, 25. 
Miracles, 87 ff. 
Missions, Foreign, 151 ff. 
Moral Mastery, 140 ff. 
Motives, 218 ff. 
Miiller, Geo., 107. 

National law, 122. 

Negro problem, 172. 

New Jersey State Chamber of 

Commerce, 193. 
New Testament, 25. 

Omar Khayyam, 66. 

Open or Closed Shop, 192 ff. 

Paley, 94. 

Pan- African Conference, 169. 

Pantheism, 43. 

Pascal, 55, 135. 

Personal Testimony, 60. 

Personality, 205. 

Philosophy, 39. 

Plato, 29, 32, 60. 

Piatt, Frederick, 93. 

Poor, 29. 

Poverty, 184. 

Prayer, 122 ff., 229. 

Prescott, 73. 

Property, 229. 

Proofs of God, 52. 

Psychology, S7t i+i* 

Race Problem, 165 ff. 
Religion, 79, 151 ff. 
Religious Education, 185. 
Revelation, 100 ff. 
Robinson, James Harvey, 116. 
Rowntree, Seebohra, 206. 
Rutherford, Samuel, 107. 



INDEX 



241 



Sacrifice, 230. 

Sanday, Dr., 89. 

Saunders, 133. 

Science, 78. 

Seeley, Prof., 92. 

Service, 209. 

Shakespeare, 71. 

Sick, 29. 

Sinful, 30. 

Slavery, 28. 

Smuts, General, 163. 

Scares, T. G., 34, 216. 

Social Gospel, 198 ff. 

Social Ideals of the Churches, 

235 ff. 
Social Questions, 161 ff. 
Socrates, 32, 71. 
Sorely, W. R., 58. 
Spencer, 51, 106. 
Spirit, The, 92. 
Spy System, 180. 
Stokes, Anson Phelps, 172. 
Streeter, B. H., 93, 128. 
Suffering and the War, 76, 230. 
Suffering, 65 ff. 

Taft, Ex-President, 166, 190. 
Tagore, 158. 
Tammany Hall, 164. 
Tavlor, Hudson, 109. 



Teaching of Jesus, 21-24. 
Temple, Wm., 39. 
Tennyson, 47, 92. 
Tertullian, 91. 
Thomson, J. A., 93, 201. 
Tolstoi, 48, 54. 
Tuskegee, 170, 171. 
Twelve Hour Day, 162. 
Tyndall, 51. 

Voliva, Wilbur, 115. 

War, Ethics of, 173 ff. 
Washington, Booker, 170. 
Wealth and Poverty, 182 ff. 
Webb, 188. ' 
Welldon, Bishop, 25. 
Wellington, 104. 
Wells, H. G., 23, 165. 
Wesley, John, 112, 201. 
White, Andrew D., 112. 
Wilson, Woodrow, 107. 
Wilberforce, 140. 
Womanhood, 29. 
World's Christian Federation, 
27. 

Yerkes Telescope, 38. 

Zion, 111., 115. 



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